The Attawapiskat Debacle

As much as native populations get screwed, they have serious issues.

I may be politically incorrect, but natives have become professional cry-baby victims… and instead of taking steps to make their lives better, they eject the federal representative that was sent to understand their present difficulties – essentially biting the hand that feeds them.

They cry out for help, and then they take offense when the help comes.

If I’m shelling out millions of dollars that seems to be simply evaporating once it gets into the native council’s hands, you’re damn straight that I’m going to put my own guy on the ground to supervise before I hand out any more cash.

Many of you are now calling for my head… but let’s be honest with each other for a minute.

The native settlement in Ontario’s north that’s getting all kinds of news coverage - Attawapiskat – looks for all intents and purposes like a post-apocalyptic landscape like any other you’d see in a medium budget Hollywood disaster flick.

And yet… the government has handed over $90,000,000 to the Attawapiskat council in the past 5 years – to take care of 1,929 people living on the reservation.

That’s just shy of $50,000 per person… and I’m fairly certain a great deal of these people live together as couples or as extended family units – so that’s more $100,000 per household for some.

Yes… I know a significant portion also goes towards municipal affairs, but there’s still a lot of money that’s just evaporated into the cold northern air without any explanation from the local tribal council members – without any sort of accountability.

If any non-native municipality squandered away almost a hundred million dollars in five years, there’d be – at the minimum – a public inquiry… if not a criminal investigation.

But no.

Not on a reservation.

They maintain they’re above or beyond the reason and laws of white civilization – please see the problems with contraband cigarettes produced on native reservations as a prime example – but come begging to the white man when they bungle up their lives so immensely that they can’t deal with it on their own… hats or head dresses in hand, and crying “woe is us!”

I fully admitted at the top of this blog that natives have been screwed over – but this is them trying to pull a fast one on Whitey and demanding that there be no strings attached.

I completely agree that we as a white, conquering population owe them a lot more than a few worthless tracts of land and a pitiful allowance to make ourselves feel better – but they must also be accountable for their mistakes and be willing to live with the consequences of their actions.

To come to the government with demands of millions more dollars without accepting a top-down forensic examination to see why people from Attawapiskat are bankrupt is pure lunacy.

At some point, they have to be saved from themselves if they can’t straighten out their own affairs – the tax paying Canadians that foot the bill deserve to have their dollars spend wisely and not have the cash stuck in empty oil barrels to be set ablaze on a cold winter night.

Note that I haven’t accused them of spending the money on truckloads of firewater like some other people have been suggesting on various internet forums… mainly because the drunken, gas huffing Injun Joe is too much of a stereotype.

However… that money has to have gone somewhere, right?

Look at this photo:

That’s a home in Attawapiskat.

Does it look like $90,000,000 has been anywhere near it in the past five years?

Not fucking likely.

So… I demand that our government stick to it’s guns and not hand over another dime in funding until some explanation has been made of how those past millions of dollars have been spent, and gotten in writing a guarantee that all money going forward is going to go towards the people of Attawapiskat directly and not towards causes that their council prefers.

Otherwise, they’re welcome to move south and struggle for a job at Labor Ready just like the whiteman.

Tim Who ‘Dat?

Ontarians – from border to border, and from Hudson Bay to the Great lakes – are on the verge of going to the polls again.

How and who they vote for will shape the government of Ontario for the next 4-5 years, and that is no inconsequential responsibility: North America is pretty much three inches and a market fart away from falling back into an economic recession that will no doubt put further pressure on the unemployment safety net as thousands of workers are let go.

The province of Ontario is a very complex machine… and when a machine breaks down, you want the right tools in your hands to fix it, right?

Unfortunately, Tim Hudak is just a tool (in the most derogatory sense).

During the 2011 election campaign, Mr. Hudak has tried to paint himself with Mike Harris’ left over cans of Tremclad Rustoleum in the supposedly trendy colour of ChangeBlue™… but he’s failed to realize that colour has been out of style for more than a decade.

While LiberalRed™ is still the preferred colour of the Ontario electorate, they’ve also developed a hankering for Andrea Horwath’s truckload of LaytonOrange™ – at least in small doses.

Tim Hudak may be good at mugging for the cameras,  but he’s been overly terrible at public policy ideas – a failing that’s always terminal in a politicians’s case, and one that can make you a laughing-stock at what’s supposed to be your defining moment.

At the start of the campaign, everything was coming up roses for Timmy and his merry band of Harris leftovers because Ontarians thought that change would be nice after 8 years of Premiere Dad – and that’s bound to happen, no matter who’s been holding on to the province’s keys: people like change now and then.

Instead of always getting the pepperoni pizza, sometimes you go out on a limb and get the Hawaiian with extra pineapple.

After a week or so of glad handing voters around the province, Hudak firmly took his campaign off the rails by repeatedly saying the word “foreigners” – and in a province that only grows with the importing of landed immigrants from other countries around the world (because the Canadian birth rate is abysmal), that was just the wrong thing to focus on.

Suddenly, Tim Hudak was all about white guys – despite him looking out over Toronto sidewalks that skewed a bit more towards yellow and brown.

On top of that, the Progressive Conservative party – that’s led by Mr. Hudak – has always been the champion of big business.

So… Tim Hudak is all about rich white guys.

And yes… I’m using white guys on purpose since the PC party has never really been on board the women’s rights train – paying lip service to it when necessary, but always mumbling quietly about finding ways to outlaw abortions.

The funny thing about the “Foreigner” debacle is that, by and large, the immigrant population are the people most likely to agree with the PC platform since most of them have come from moderately- to radically conservative countries… which makes them more likely to drink the HarriBerry Blue™ Kool-Aid.

The idiocy of Hudak’s derailment is based on one glaring fact: they have no serious issues to grab the undecided voter’s attention.

Television advertisements paid for by the PC party have only harped on about taxes: Dalton McGuinty and his Fiberals are supposedly raising taxes every other week and twice on Christmas.

While it is true that taxes have gone up in Ontario, they’re not disproportionate to the rate of inflation… and there’s been a concrete need for any taxes implemented by the Liberal government over their past two mandates.

Evil Tax Number One a.k.a. The Health Care Premium: Do you have any idea how much money is needed to care for the rapidly aging Baby Boom generation?  To care for the existing senior citizens?  To battle health concerns like SARS and swine flu?  Billions of dollars… billions of dollars that can’t be completely extracted from the amount of money brought into public coffers through various levels of personal and retail taxation – so the government needed a way to continue paying for our universal health care without digging itself further into debt.

Evil Tax Number Two a.k.a. The Eco-Tax: More than a million metric tons of used electronics used to go into landfills across the province before the turn of the century, and many still do… but that’s changing under the auspices of the Ontario Stewardship (a program that was itself set in motion by the previous PC government as a way to boost their environmental credentials) – and the money that’s required to start complex recycling programs province-wide has to come from somewhere… and where better to get that money than at the point of sale for the widescreen LCD television that you will discard in the next 5 years? That way, you’ve already paid for it’s recycling long before it’s necessary… instead of the government having to dip into it’s already strained and tattered pocketbook.

Evil Tax Number Three a.k.a. The HST: I’ve already explained why the HST is a necessary evil in previous blogs, so there’s not much I can add here. At the end of the day, Ontario needed to have the HST so it’s businesses could compete with other business entities around the world in our Global Economy because other jurisdictions in Europe, Asia, the U.S., Mexico, and South America already had in place single-point or so-called “value added” tax systems that made paying corporate taxes easier and more streamlined… and therefore cheaper over the long run.

With that Evil Tax Trifecta, surely Hudak could have made a better case for lowering taxes for the masses, right?

No… he couldn’t – and didn’t.

The HST couldn’t be revoked without activating a ‘poison pill’ scenario that was inserted by Hudak’s Conservative cousins in the federal government: if the province of Ontario were to revoke the HST, it would have to pay back $4 billion dollars in equalization money that’s already been sent to majority of Ontario citizens by those four special cheques you found in your mailbox over the past year – which would immediately be added to the province’s debt load and sinking the S.S. Ontario further into the Sea Of Red Ink… and would necessitate a rise in income taxes.

The best Hudak could promise on the HST front (and to be fair, Horwath has said the same things) was a modification of items that were included on the list of items taxable under HST – mainly removing the federal portion of the taxes on heating oil and electricity bills.

I suppose that would be nice, but hardly practical since it would cause a headache for the taxation department – a department that would eventually find a way to make up the difference from some other way of taxing you.

Onto the Health Care Premium.

Has Mr. Hudak said he would do away with those?

Nope. In fact, he’s said – very quietly and far away from voters waving little blue flags – that he will keep those in place because they do what I said they did a few paragraphs upwards from this one.

At the end of the day, the only one of those three Evil Taxes that Mr. Hudak and the PCs could tamper with in any meaningful way – and the meaning wouldn’t be necessarily good – would be the Eco-Tax.

However, as I hopefully made it clear up above, that would simply be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul – letting you off the hook at the point of purchase and then raising your personal taxes to maintain funding for the recycling facilities for your disposable iPods, Blackberries, flat screen televisions, and laptops… and to also pay for the water purification plants that remove the chemicals you put down the drain every day.

Outside of he Evil Tax Trifecta, Hudak doesn’t have a platform.

Healthcare? It can be argued that Ontario’s health care system is in the best shape it’s ever been in.

Yes… there are still crowded emergency rooms at hospitals across the province, but the wait times are getting better on the whole – especially for surgeries that can change people’s lives… or let them continue their lives as whole persons.

A few years ago, I was in serious bicycle accident and I snapped my leg in three places – something that would have been seriously debilitating in decades and centuries past…. even so bad that amputation would have been considered in more primitive times.

Guess what? The accident happened just after 1 o’clock in the afternoon… and I was in surgery to have a titanium rod permanently inserted down the middle of my tibia with attending screws and other hardware required to regain structural integrity – allowing me to walk on it again within several months – at 6 o’clock in the evening on the very same day.

So, I went from mangled to mostly fixed in five hours… and I didn’t have to pay a single cent – not even for the ambulance ride.

No… our healthcare system may not be perfect, but it’s still pretty damn amazing when you consider how much it has to struggle when it comes to finances.

The Progressive Conservatives, during their last stint as the province’s controls had taken a slash n’ burn approach to healthcare – firing doctors and nurses, and closing nearly twenty hospitals across the province… which caused such systemic damage that Ontario’s healthcare system was amongst the worst in the country, and it’s only now (2011) that it’s gotten back to the top.

Hudak & Pals don’t have any where to go with education, either.

The Liberals under Dalton McGuinty have made some radical improvements to public education in Ontario.

More students are sticking it out all the way through high school, graduating with marks that they can be proud of.

Smaller class sizes have helped students get the attention they need from their teachers, which means they get the help they need if they need it – either in that same classroom, or in more specialized learning environments.

The biggest change, of course, was the implementation of full-day kindergarten for all youngsters – which had two effects: the first being that children started experiencing a constructive learning environment sooner than most other children in North America… and it eased the financial burdens of working families that would have otherwise had to pay for daycare or babysitting services.

There’s very little to complain about when it comes to Ontario’s public schools.

In fact, there’s very little for Ontarians to complain about on the whole as the province simply works.

Compared to the Mike Harris years – an era where nearly every public sector union in Ontario was on strike – that Tim Hudak clearly yearns for deeply, Ontario is firmly planted in the Garden Of Prosperity.

Yes… there are many people across the province who are out of work because of the current global financial climate that isn’t particular to Ontario.

However, there are many people who’ve either regained or retained their employment because of programs that the current Liberal government forced into being with their majority… programs that cost many billions of dollars, but had very clear and tangible results.

Sure – the bailing out of General Motors and Chrysler (now owned by Fiat) was a popularly unpopular move… but it kept those two massive companies who employed thousands of Ontarians (either directly or through companies G.M. and Chrysler depended on to build their cars and trucks) alive.

The manufacturing sector in Ontario – and the world at large – has taken a beating as money becomes tight for consumers.

Companies that face certain peril if they don’t downsize their workforce have no choice to let employees go… and this is not the fault of the Ontario government.

It’s the fault of American banks and financial institutions who squandered and pissed away more than a trillion dollars in crooked investments and other equally worthless endeavors – actions that had a ripple effect across the entire world of stock exchanges and investment banking from New York to Tokyo.

The current hard financial times facing Ontario are not something that was caused in Ontario, and is most definitely not the fault of the McGuinty Liberals.

However, Tim Hudak has done his best to blame Dalton McGuinty for it… and in the end, the blame hasn’t stuck.

Maybe because the average Ontario voter is smarter than that… and I would really hope that’s the case.

However, I think the Ontarian electorate is sticking with the Liberals because Ontario is in a better place than a lot of jurisdictions in North America – and even the world.

Dalton McGuinty goes on television and shows you all the  good things the Liberals have done over the time they’ve been in charge – most of which I’ve discussed here.

…And Tim Hudak challenges McGuinty and Horwath to a BBQ cook-off.

If that wasn’t a sign of non-existent political platform, I really don’t know what is.

…

No, Timmy.

No you can’t.

I Must Protest!

(NOTE: Edited with actual protester numbers on 8/30/2010)

Folks, I find myself writing this post in dire protest of protesters – but only those who congregate in less than critical numbers, and those who protest events worlds away from their selected protest site.

Am I the only one who finds it rather silly that 25 people 35 people in Peterborough gather up to protest a woman being stoned to death in Iran?

Is there some ayatollah in Iran who’s going to read about this little chanting session from a handful of attention seekers and say “Great Allah’s Beard! Why haven’t we seen the error of our ways before this moment? How could we have been so wrong?”

The notion is so clearly retarded that it makes my mind spin.

Before you say it, I must say that I do understand the underlying concept: protesting here will attempt to put upward social pressure on elected government officials who may actually have some influence on the world stage.

However, these people really need to be honest with themselves.

Nobody cares.

It’s a sad thing, yes… but none-the-less true: the woman who is being stoned to death has absolutely nothing to do with anybody this far removed from Iran (excluding any immigrants of an Iranian origin).

Sure… there are any number of bleeding hearts out there that will donate $10 to a $100 to an organization like Amnesty International to appease their conscience – but then they’ll move on with their day, completely absolved of responsibility and forget the whole thing.

At the end of the day, this sort of protest is as effective as protesting the sun or the moon.

Even if you blow the number of protesters up a thousand times, odds are that politicians still won’t listen.

The recent G8/G20 summit and it’s attached protests would be a great example of that: thousands upon thousands of protesters/rioters/all-around hooligans descended on Toronto to scream, shout, break windows, and set police cars on fire in protest of… what? The global economy?

They did all this for the government agents and representatives on hand, right? The ones that blithely ignored them?

Or how about the Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire – burning to death calmly in protest?

Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức did this in South Vietnam to protest how Buddhist were treated – but this only resulted in lip service from the ruling government at the time.

For there to be any effect on governmental bodies, the protesters have to be a real and legitimate threat – threatening to take away the government’s power to rule through the election process: in a democratic society, every eligible voter gets one vote… and if enough of those votes are possessed by people protesting, that is an immediate danger to the politicos in charge.

To understand this, we have to go back in time… back to the American Civil Rights movement.

Martin Luther King’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a truly awesome sight and one of the most effective protests that I can think of – nearly half a million people descending on the nation’s seat of power.

It showed the powers in Washington that the black man was now united in it’s desire for equality… that there were now millions of voters in the U.S.A. that would throw their ballots in the direction of whatever party and presidential candidate that would give them the right to stand up with pride and dignity in CrackerLand.

And while the results were not immediate, they were tangible: a year later, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

For protests to work, you need to have both numbers… a commonality… and authoritative body that can be threatened.

This can be easily demonstrated in many European countries where the governments actually fear the people e.g. France: if the French government passes some legislative charter that doesn’t sit well with the average citizen, a large fraction of the populace will take to the streets for days or even weeks until the government backs down.

Somehow, the North American populace has lost this power – and I have to say that we are poorer for it, but it is how it is.

However, I’ve been talking purely about democratic society and not those elsewhere that aren’t quite that free.

Let’s zero in on Iran where that poor woman is going to be stoned to death.

Yes… in theory, Iran has open and freely voted democratic elections – but the caveat is that the country is a theocracy ruled by ayatollahs, and that makes the presidential and governmental processes purely symbolic.

As much as we would like to heap hatred on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he is merely the mouth piece of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – a puppet (a poorly dressed one) that spouts the religious party lines when the ayatollah can’t be bothered with the small details.

So, honestly, what are 25 people in Peterborough going to do against that?

Especially considering the entire frakkin’ UNITED NATIONS can’t get Iran to do squat?

The majority of U.N. members don’t want Iran to have any sort of nuclear energy whatsoever – in case it results in the development of nuclear weapons – but Iran just fueled up it’s first nuclear reactor with the help of the Russians (who also tend to do whatever they like).

If the world’s most powerful authority (at least ostensibly) can’t get certain nations to change their ways, what chance do a few attention whores carrying signs and chanting rhyming mantras have?

Grace Lake: The Return

After 12-15 years, I returned to what used to be my home – the shores of Grace Lake in the northern reaches of Central Ontario.

The view from the beach was the same as ever with the eye’s attention drawn to the ‘large’ island in the center (which is actually not that big when you look at it from the side or at it’s rear flank).

However, from the shoreline to the main highway a kilometer away, it’s very hard to pick out the features that are so ingrained into my memories.

Gone are the open spaces where you could roam around at will – replaced with trees and bushes so thick that they’re all but impenetrable.

All of the landmarks that I saw every waking day for the first 12 years of my life (okay – more like 10 years since I was two years old when my mother shacked up with my stepfather) were nowhere to be seen, and let me tell you, that is an incredibly disorienting feeling.

You folks out there who have been born and raised in urban centers can’t possibly understand what that feeling is like since it can’t really occur to you because no matter how much the city changes around you, there will always be something to help you find your way: a bridge, a street, a statue, a park, a landmark municipal building… none of these thing ever go away.

Sure, your favorite stadium might be torn down… or that crappy shopping plaza down the street from your parents house might have been razed so that a new movie theater and restaurant can be put in it’s stead, but the fact is that the road it fronts on to will still be there and you’re not going to get lost because you can’t see the busted sign for the dilapidated bowling alley.

However, imagine going away to college, then university, and then getting employed overseas – a journey through life that takes you 15 – 20 years before you make that trek back to where you started from.

Now imagine the entire city simply having vanished with nothing but a few broken bricks strewn about to even say there had been anything there.

How lost would you feel? How stupid would you feel for not knowing which way was what?

That’s how I felt upon returning to Grace Lake after my family’s property had been sold, divided up, and remade to the new owner’s visions – and make no mistake: the property that my grandparents sold to former MPP Chris Hodgson measured in multiple hectares.

Hell, I had to walk a kilometer just to catch the school bus every morning (and yes, I’m aware of sounding like an old timer when I tell you that).

That very road that I walked along through sun, rain, sleet, or waist deep snow now has homes built along it – each with sizable lots.

The cottage resort with 30 slots for recreational travel trailers was completely gone… not that I expected it to be there.

I knew that the wealthy had come and built a series of million dollar cottages on the shores of Grace Lake, but I had no idea that those buyers would let the land go to seed – that they would plant so  many trees that you wouldn’t even know that there was a lake to be seen if you didn’t already know it was present.

I had to access the shoreline via a family friend’s property, and even then, it was only about 15 – 18 feet of undeveloped trees and sand… looking out onto a breath-taking body of water that drew me into it’s grasp: I couldn’t control myself and waded out knee-deep into the crystal clear water that seemed to welcome me like a long lost relative.

But all I had to do was look to my left and see the perversion of what had been all mine: docks and floating piers supporting pleasure craft and luxury speed boats – instead of a pristine sand beach longer than the length of a football field or soccer pitch.

However, we all know that time stops for no one – no matter how we wish for it sometimes.

Every step we make, every breath we take, and every time we blink our eyes only moves us further and further along time’s highway… and it’s a highway filled with speeding cars and trucks that only go one way – so there’s no point in trying to thumb a ride back towards the beginning (at least not yet).

To borrow a lyric from Gordon Lightfoot – and one that seems to apply here: Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

As you’ll see in the attached video, Grace Lake has no shortage of waves, and they just keep rolling in without stop… furthering the days and years until there will be nobody left that remembers a cottage resort named Birch Villa – which is a certainty.

All that remains is the faces and the names… of the residents… of the customers… of 30 years or so of seasonal visitors.

Sure – there are photographs tucked away in dusty attics all over this continent that show what the lakefront used to look like.

But how long are those going to last? A generation past those who actually camped at the lake?

How long before those pics get shoved in a trash can by some kid in the future who thinks they’re lame – and kids already think the outdoors is a waste of time as it is.

It’s not like they can hop in a car and visit what’s in the photos in the grand tradition of road trips of self-discovery.

If it’s not going to be there for me – who lived there 24/7/365 – then it’s not going to be there for them.

All that’s left for me is a fading road sign that bares my surname…

.

.

…pointing towards a lake that you can’t see.

Good News, Everybody! $100 For Just Being You!

Well… to be more precise, I have to specify that it’s $100 for just being from Ontario, Canada.

Also need to point out that if you make more than $82,000 a year, you won’t get a dime – so all you fat cats in banking and insurance will have to supply your own splurge funds!

Anyway…

A lot of you who are simple enough to buy into Tim Hudak’s message that the government is bribing you with your own money are more than welcome to rip up these nifty little cheques and go on about your business.

What’s that? You already cashed yours?

I see.

You must have done it under great protest… bitterly cussing out each and every single cent.

Regardless of those people who complain for the sake of complaining, these cheques are a nice shot in the arm when money has been thin due to the economy – and yes, I know some of the money being sent to your snail mail boxes or direct deposited in your bank accounts will be stolen back from you when the HST is fully implemented on July 1st, 2010.

However, I’ve done the math for myself, and have come to the conclusion that of the $300 dollars I will receive from the government through the Sales Tax Transition Benefit (S.T.T.R.), only $45 to $50 of it will go back to Queens Park in the form of HST a year – solely through a $4 and change increase on my telephone/internet bill.

Phone services have always had the PST added to them.

Same goes for my cable bill.

The only area of my regular finances that will be effected is my internet service.

Yes… there will no doubt be incidental HST taxation throughout the year – though I can only imagine it happening to me on the 2 or 3 taxi fares that I grudgingly throw money at a year.

It’s hard taking a new TV or office chair home on the bus!

Before you say it, let me beat you to the punch: I know a lot of you out there don’t have your finances in the same amount of control I do.

There are many of you who may be charged more HST than what you receive by the end of the S.T.T.B. cycle in July, 2011 – because you have a bigger set of financial liabilities and bills that you are responsible for.

But you must always bare in mind that your overall tax load has been reduced via both income tax reductions for more than 90% of the Ontario population, and the products/services you consume will become cheaper as corporations that operate in Ontario stop passing on to you parts of their taxation that have always been hidden in the prices you pay at the cash register.

Yes… you’ve been paying some of the taxes that Ontario companies (both large and small) are charged for doing business in Ontario.

Every case of Coca-Cola you buy in Ontario carries some of the taxes that will be charged to the local Coke bottling operation/Coke delivery operations/Coca-Cola Canada Ltd. head office – but it’s buried in the price tag that you see on the shelf.

Furthermore, the store you buy the Coke from also passes on some of their taxes as well in that price sticker.

In fact, every business that has had anything to do with that case of Coke Zero (aside from the manufacturer) passes on some of their taxes to you – think of the companies that print the cardboard carton the Coke cans come in, or the business that makes the cans that you drink The Real Thing from.

With the introduction of HST, all of those companies instantly save money through streamlining.

Some of them will save money when certain items they buy are cheaper – either through the removal of one tax layer, or because they will save money in the same way that you do through the removal of hidden taxes.

Companies like Walmart and Hewlett-Packard know that you – the person who buys the products they sell – ultimately choose whether they live or die when you vote with your wallet, so they can not continue to charge the same prices on the whole that they did before HST came into effect.

Yes, it may take anywhere between 6 months and a year for those passed on savings become tangible in comparison to what you pay now in June, 2010 – but by the time that happens, you probably won’t notice because the price decreases will be slow and incremental.

On July 1st, that case of Coke won’t all of a sudden be 10 cents cheaper – that’s completely unreasonable as all the people involved in getting that 12-pack to the grocery shelf still had to pay disharmonized taxes on everything that went into it.

Companies – both large and small – often sign yearly contracts to pay certain prices – and there’s a good chance that Coca-Cola might be locked into paying 3 cents for every aluminum can it fills until its contract with the aluminum supplier runs out in December, instead of 2.5 cents a can per a new contract come January 1st, 2011.

Until then, Coca-Cola still has to charge you that .5 of a cent per can to at least break even.

If it comes to be June 10th, 2011 and you’re still paying the same prices that you are on June 10, 2010 on your goods and services, then you know that the companies you’re dealing with are being dishonest – and you can then take the necessary steps to make them accountable.

Buy your services/products from another vendor who has dropped their prices a few dollars or a handful of pennies, nickels, and dimes.

You have the power.

As for the money that does go to Queen’s Park from the taxes that you can’t avoid?

It all comes back to you.

Maybe not in the form of a cheque – though some of you who make less than $15,000 dollars a year in taxable income will receive three cheques a year for $87 dollars.

All of you will see that money come back to you in the form of improved provincial services – better health care, improved education, and more infrastructure spending that this province desperately needs but can’t afford at the current tax level.

Are you aware that more than $0.50 of every dollar you spend in taxes goes to funding health care in Ontario?

That cost is only increasing as the Baby Boomer generation ages – and will continue to do so exponentially.

Where do you expect the government to get that money to pay for your sick grandparents – or hell, even you when you’re ill and laid up in a hospital?

Especially when you’re also demanding that there be better roads in Ontario to drive on.

When you want Ontario children to have superior education when compared to other areas of the country so they have a leg up on kids from Manitoba at job application time.

Many of you desire more police officers on the streets to make you feel safer.

Our environment requires funding to help us breathe cleaner air and to have lakes/rivers/streams that we can swim in without worrying about getting sick.

These are all valid things to want and desire from your government – the people you elected to represent you and your needs.

However, all those things come at a price… and the province needs the money to pay for these increased expenditures.

And that money comes from you.

Nowhere else.

Complaining about it doesn’t change the facts.

Like it or not, you’ll be better off in at least a dozen areas of your life through that Harmonized Sales Tax – probably more.

So accept your S.T.T.R. cheques happily and put the money to good use.

I know I will.

Video Blog: The Start Of April

And…

Some Proof That Stormcastle Walks His Talk…

No muss, no fuss.

No walking backwards, no brain malfunctions.

Just a sore shoulder… much better than dying or spreading the virus to someone else.

H1N1: The Absolute Truth

I hate you.

No, not YOU.

You, over there… the idiot who’s choosing not to get the H1N1 flu shot.

The potential murderer.

Did I just call you a potential murderer?

Let me check… *scrolls up*… yes I did.

Just because you’re too stupid and selfish to take time out of your precious little life and get a needle (o noes! 0_o), you’re going to risk not only YOUR life, but possibly the life of someone else.

I mean… seriously: how freakin’ selfish is that?

You’re going to freely condemn someone else – whom chances are you don’t even know – to a possibly miserable death at the hands of a merciless virus that can’t tell good people from bad people, white people from Asian people, or intelligent people from dumbasses like yourself.

Here’s how it goes:

You get the H1N1 flu and you get sick, but not deathly ill, and you shrug it off and pat yourself on the back for knowing better than the supposed ‘scientists’.

Bravo, Oh Great And Knowledgeable One. Good for you!

You don’t feel like ass anymore, so you decide it’s okay to go out shopping for groceries and maybe hit up Blockbuster for a movie rental.

Being environmentally conscious, you don’t drive a vehicle – so you hop on the nearest city bus, passing through a small crowd of passengers until you find a seat next to some young skater kids who are making a lot of noise.

One of the kids stinks of marijuana smoke and you cough and breathe heavily trying to get the stench out of your sinuses and throat.

Once the bus rolls up to your shopping destination, you stand up and thread your way through the throng of passengers, holding on to the hand grips as you go.

You step off the bus, passing some elderly women who just finished the grocery trip.

Inside the store, you head for the produce section since you think it’s good to feed yourself lots of veggies and fruit to help your body kick the remaining effects of H1N1, picking up and examining the assorted farmed goods so you get the best specimens of Mother Earth’s bounty.

As you stroll along the aisles, you realize that you’re out of Reese Puffs!

Lucky for you, there’s a clearance sale due to a pallet of slightly squished cereal boxes. Score!

Triumphantly finding a box that’s in near perfect condition after sorting through the display pile, you head to the check out realizing your total will be less than $10 and that you have enough large coinage in your pocket to cover it.

You wait in line behind an immigrant family who is taking FOREVER to get through, and in your impatient mood, bounce the coins around in your hand while cursing Canada’s immigration policies and sighing heavily in their direction in hopes they’ll get the idea that you’re not someone who enjoys delays.

Finally, you get to the cashier and hand her your hot and sweaty toonies, loonies, and quarters and breath out deeply at the thought of freedom from this retched store!

You go outside into a gaggle of people waiting for the bus and realize it won’t be there for another half-hour at the least, which bums you out large since you just want to get your movie, go home, and veg out on the sofa while your body recuperates.

Whipping out your cell phone, you call for a taxi while an extraordinarily thin guy watches you with some disdain.

‘Hippie‘ you think to yourself as your bark at the hard of hearing cab dispatcher.

“Say it, don’t spray it” mutters the thin guy.

The nerve of some people!

Your cab arrives and you slide in the back seat after the driver takes your grocery bag and stows it in the trunk while making small talk, remarking you look like you were hit by a rhinoceros – to which you make a weak smile and say it’s allergies (no need to alarm people).

As the city streets roll by, you relax and rest your hand on the door’s armrest.

Yay! You’ve reached Blockbuster!

You pay the cabbie with a $20 bill that you’ve been holding on to since he drove into the plaza, and hop out as the driver pops the trunk.

With your grocery bag in hand, you head into the video store – but realize you have no idea what kind of movie you’re in the mood for – and spend the next twenty minutes strolling through the aisles as you pick up random movie cases and read the back of them in hopes of finding an inspiration.

Finally, you leave the store with Paul Blart: Mall Cop and walk to the nearest bus stop, happy that the bus will be there within minutes.

As you wait, a couple of youngish girls walk up to the stop, wearing Girl Guide uniforms and carrying a satchel of cookie boxes.

“Mint chocolate cookies? Wow… those do look good,” you hear yourself saying as you scrounge inside your wallet for a $5 bill.

The blond girl cheerily hands you the cookies as you spot the city bus droning along the street towards you.

As you get on the bus, you thank your lucky stars that it’s now time to head home and relax with the movie and cookies after a good meal.

-

Good story, huh? Sounds like an average day in the average life of an average person.

How many people came into contact with the H1N1 virus that you were carrying around the town while you blissfully got your errands done?

The 13-year-old skater punks? The African immigrants who aren’t normally exposed to the flu in the middle of the desert?

How about that thin guy at the bus stop who had just gone through some intense chemotherapy for his lymphoma?

Or maybe the pregnant woman who you thought was sort of stalking you at Blockbuster as she picked up movies you already looked at.

That asthmatic cabbie handled your groceries and your money before resuming his diet of coffee and donuts?

Just after you left the produce section, and HIV-positive ex-hooker handled the cantaloupes you were squeezing.

So tell me, Oh Great And Knowledgeable One: which of those people is going to pick up the bits of H1N1 you left out there in the city?

Which one of those people who are very prone to getting sick from other people’s cast-offs will have  nearly-even odds of dying?

Let’s say it’s the thin cancer patient.

He ends up in the emergency room three days later, his lungs full of fluid and his heart struggling hard to keep up – which kills him within the following 16 hours.

In the meantime, you’ve gotten right as rain and have returned to work and are still congratulating yourself on how you beat the H1N1 virus without any vaccination harshing your buzz.

See… you know better than all of the world’s scientists, immunologists, doctors, nurses, and public officials who have spent decades practicing in their respective fields.

You have the inside track on what’s REALLY going on in the medical world.

It’s all about money, right?

The GlaxoSmithKlines of the world are always on the lookout for new ways to make money – and will slyly create a massive panic around the world so they can come to the rescue with a shoddy, untested treatment based on strange technologies that probably will cause autism in children or brain damage in 20% of the adult population.

Yeah, thank god you have the internet and are subscribed to World Of Warcraft forums.

How else would you have gotten the actual facts of the H1N1 scare? I mean… all those social shut-ins living in their mother’s basements are the absolute best knowledge keepers humanity has to offer!

Oh, that’s right. You also watch Fox News on cable… and everything they report is 100% solid factual reporting.

You, your internet friends, and the talking heads on Fox News don’t need university or medical school degrees to know about the biosystems of the human organism and all  threats that the natural world presents to it.

All of you are 100% smarter!

You, sir/madame, are an idiot.

Not just any old idiot either.

You are a fucking idiot.

A total, self-righteous whack job  – who truly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone other than themselves – that is erroneously convinced by illiterate and unknowledged sources that the H1N1 vaccine is nothing more than ill-advised voodoo.

You have been indoctrinated by one of the largest cadre of fools on the face of this planet – people akin to those who believe the world is flat and that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax.

The absolute facts about the H1N1 vaccine are these:

- the vaccine will help your body’s immune system recognize and attack the H1N1 virus

- the vaccine will help control the spread of the virus by removing your body as a potential vector (pathway) to another human

- the technology behind the vaccine is exactly the same as the yearly flu vaccine that many of you hold-outs normally get each year

- there is ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that vaccines are responsible for autism in children i.e. all supposed ‘evidence’ is   anecdotal…  the scientific equivalent of hearsay

- vaccines work! many of the world’s pathogens have been eradicated through the use of vaccines. How many people do you know that have polio or small pox?

- adjuvants added to the vaccine are nothing to be alarmed about: these additives increase your body’s awareness of the virus and boost it’s ability to create the proper antibodies

Facts about the H1N1 virus:

- people who have not received the vaccination are dying

- like many viruses, you may have the H1N1 virus in your system and not show any symptoms beyond a runny nose

- you can not contract H1N1 from eating pork products

- the virus is highly durable and can live in a dormant state on hard surfaces before accessing the human body via an orifice such as the mouth or nose

- the H1N1 virus is NOT similar to the seasonal flu viruses that people in developed countries are exposed to on a yearly basis, and therefore you are NOT vaccinated against H1N1 variants

- people born between 1917 and 1950 are more resilient against the virus (having been previously exposed) as its make-up is very similar to the 1918 Influenza that killed up to 100,000,000 people  worldwide – but are not 100% H1N1 proof.

- H1N1 is not SARS (bird flu) and you are not immune to it if you were exposed to SARS

- no geographical area is safe from H1N1 as it can survive in any climate that a human can, and it can access any environment that a human can travel to

- washing your hands is NOT a fool-proof way of protecting yourself from H1N1 – only full biohazard gear can guarantee safety from the virus

- eating healthy foods is good for the immune system and may help fight the virus, but it will NOT prevent virus infection

.

All of the above facts are completely backed by empirical scientific data and can NOT be argued by anyone who does not have a degree in medicine or the applied science of immunology.

The average person with average learning is unsuited to advising you on this very important matter.

Would you consult an architect about whether you should have a heart transplant?

Is the opinion from a stockboy who works at the Mac’s Milk on the corner relevant when you’re considering radiation therapy?

Why the hell would you listen to some jackass on the internet who doesn’t have any formal medical or scientific training?

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Why are you jeopardizing other people with your own absolute stupidity?

What on Earth gives you the right to do that?

I don’t care about the rights you so callously speak about when you discuss your body.

What about the rights of the people you could infect?

Don’t they have a right to be protected from your lunacy?

People get thrown in jail for idiocy like drinking and driving because the odds state there is a good chance that they will hurt someone while operating their car under the influence of alcohol.

Why can’t we jail asinine persons such as yourself who are playing with the exact type of odds?

Some of you are so completely messed up in your head that I wish I could shake you by the shoulders, push you to the ground, and kick you until you see the error of your ways – until you admit that you’re not 25% as smart as you claim to  be.

But, man… if I had to do that to everyone of the idiots like you out there, my arms and legs would probably fall off from the strain.

.

No.

All I can do is stand here on my soapbox and scream at you to absolutely no effect.

You’re perfectly happy in your ignorant bliss.

People drop dead in your community from H1N1 and you don’t get it.

So all I have to say is this:

If by some act of fate you contract H1N1 and it kills you, I will not waste ONE SINGLE SOLITARY SECOND of my life mourning for you.

I will thank whatever powers run this universe that your stupid ass will be removed from society, and that you will have been stopped from endangering the rest of the human species.

.

As with those who got the vaccine, one less vector is great news.

———————————————————————————-

This rant has been aimed purely at those who have refused the H1N1 vaccine and not those who haven’t had the choice made available to them due to restriction of supply. If you or someone you know has been sick with H1N1 before the vaccine was available to you, and you would have chosen to receive the vaccine, I feel great sympathy for you.

A Not-So Grand Opening

Now, before you give me a dirty look, this article is NOT spawned by the manager of Lansdowne Place’s failure to allow me to photograph inside the mall’s new expansion on it’s opening day – or even returning my call and email for that matter (and I’ve been waiting for over a week now).

Okay, okay… it might be based on the above just a wee bit

This is mostly based on good optics.

Lansdowne Place is THE mall destination for Peterborough citizens (and also for people who live in the surrounding villages), and thusly should take every step to make sure it’s image in 100% when attracting attention to itself – lest some shoppers get the notion that their hard-earned dollars be spent someplace else.

In an effort to assure more dollars rolling in, the mall has been undertaking large-scale renovation over the past few years to update it’s profile – which is essential to maintain shopper growth in the area’s burgeoning urban and youth segment.

October 15th was the grand unveiling of the new expansion wing that reaches out to the Loblaw’s Supercenter (which opened mid-winter 2009).

So eager was the management, that the enticed early morning shoppers with a promise of 500 ‘swag bags’ filled with freebies from mall tenants.

All signs of “Hey! Look at how awesome we are now!”

However, when people arrived, what exactly did they see first?

And this…

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

“Everybody come on down and see how greedy we are for your shopping dollars! We’re so desperate, we can’t even wait for the exterior work to be done! Come now and bring your cash with you, and we’ll give 500 of you a bag of free samples from some of our retailers to make you forget about the sloppiness outside!”

At least… that’s what it says to me.

What do you think, oh loyal readers?

Photography Tip: If you’re going to take a photo of something like a commercial building without express permission from the facility’s owners, be sure to take the photographs from a public space such as a sidewalk or street – which covers you by bringing into effect the ‘reasonable expectation of privacy‘ caveat if the owners wanted to get snarky with you.

A Few Words Strung Together About The Ontario HST…

Listen.

You can’t do anything about it – no matter how much the NDP and PC parties would have you believe.

You should also remember when it comes to election time in 2011, neither the NDP or the PC party could cancel it – even if they were inclined to do so… which is completely unlikely because government likes money – since it makes it possible for them to live up to 45% of the promises they make during their election campaigns.

The only reason that the NDP and PC parties are squawking about it now – two years before any election could be called by normal means – is that they’re trying to build up doubt amongst voters in the long term.

In two years time, the dust will have settled mostly over the HST implementation because the electorate will have been paying the extra taxes for more than a year and will have settled into acceptance – however begrudging it is.

Ontarians were irritated by the health premium tax introduced by the Liberals before eventually getting over it by the next election – despite the two opposition parties hammering away on the issue to no end during the last provincial election campaign.

It all boils down to the experienced adult’s concept of reality i.e. the old saying that the only certainties in life are death and taxes – which is pretty much universal no matter which party is in control of Ontario’s parliament.

Taxes go up in the long term – never down (except in brief spurts that raise the ruling party’s profile for a time – such as the federal Conservatives lowering the GST rates).

Why don’t they ever go down?

It’s simple: the provincial electorate – the citizens who vote during an election – get used to a particular level of service from their government and it’s individual agencies that deals directly with the public.

Let’s take two costly departments as an example – the Ministry Of Health, and the Ministry Of Education.

These two governmental departments take an enormous amount of cash to run at their current levels of service… and even then, they don’t really have enough money to meet their goals as set out by the government – the goals that the majority of Ontario’s citizens look forward to seeing implemented sooner than later.

How else is the government going to pay for shorter wait times at hospitals and doctor’s offices?

Where is the government going to get money to hire teachers and implement a better curriculum to teach at your children’s schools?

Taxation.

The money for these enormous public institutions comes from your pocket through taxes and tariffs on the goods and services that you consume on a daily basis.

As much as it hurts at the point of purchase, the average citizen sees that money come back to them in the form of the government improving areas of their lives – whether it be through better health care, improved educational opportunities, or expanded and renewed infrastructure projects.

That’s where your tax money will go when the HST comes into effect next July.

The NDP and the PC parties would like it very much if you temporarily (or better yet, in the long term) forget that you can’t get something for nothing in this world that we live in.

Both the provincial New Democrats and Tories tried that last time they ran the province and what did it result in?

Nearly every single public employee union was on strike.

The poor were getting poorer.

Health care suffered.

Things didn’t get better until taxes went up when the Liberals took over.

See how that works?

In the end, higher taxes make people happier – which seems rather perverse when you think about it and is the absolute inverse of what the opposition parties want you to believe.

What else can they harp about that will resonate with the general public?

The OLG and eHealth scandals are fleeting and will subside over time, most likely long forgotten by the fall season in 2011 – yet the NDP and PCs still nag about those at every chance they get – despite only the eHealth issue being directly attributable to the current Liberal party.

No… taxes are the only long-term issue that effects the public, so that’s the topic which the opposition will crow the loudest about.

But it doesn’t really matter in the end.

We as the voting public will get over the HST and the increases that it represents to our bottom lines.

That may stick in your craw at the moment and leave a sour taste in your mouth – but it’s inevitable.

It’s somewhat similar to those of you out there that may be reading this blog who absolutely HATE getting any kind of needle – regardless of the obvious health benefits that will you’ll receive upon going through the momentary pain.

So why don’t we all just roll up our sleeves and demand that our chosen political parties get it over with and move on to something far more interesting?

I, for one, and really tired of hearing the broken record that’s playing at Question Period.

Let’s listen to something better.

Video Blog: Paving Paradise…

My blog today is in video format.

Please watch below.

A Call To Courage