Sunday # 1

Lou Rinaldi, that vertically challenged man who represents us with platitudes and apparent indifference to anything that cannot be put in a press release, is defending the provincial move to the HST. After reading much about it I now know what infuriates me about this cash grab. Never mind the fact that it will bite into my disposable income by taxing products which are currently not taxed, but the consumer will pay. This is not a progressive or fair tax. Businesses will be able to claim "input credits" and get rebates. Why should this be. It will mean a huge shift in taxpaying from business to consumer. Totally unfair.
"Business will thrive" says Lou, but at whose expense? If there's anything we know about consumer economics is that there is only so much money to go around and all these moves in taxation shifts do is to move the burden. If the HST and the elimination of Provincial sales tax is doing nothing other than allowing business to claim "input credits" which would not accrue any credit to business, just how will businees thrive as Lou claims. And more importantly why is the Chamber of Commerce all over this one? There is more to this than meets ny eye! The consumer is going to get hosed and they feel powerless to stop it. It will be interesting to see just how successful the NDP is going to be in the next BC by-election, with the HST as a central issue.

Another guest piece

From Deb O'Connor:

WOMEN HAVE BEEN SOLD A BILL OF GOODS

For years now we have been told that women have reached equality in all areas of their lives. We are free to go to school, then pursue worthwhile careers in the big wide world. All the doors are open.

Feminism has achieved its goals and isn't needed anymore, they say. Kind of like unions. But wait, if we take a closer look we see some of the same old barriers, same old thinking, still at play.
You see, in the course of becoming liberated, we failed to shuck those old fashioned responsibilities that have burdened us for so long. Free to work, sure, but when the liberated woman comes home she will likely find partner and children waiting for their dinner. Hope she went shopping on her way home! Then there's the housework, laundry, care-giving for kids and elderly parents and all the other domestic chores to do. Statistics tell us it's still primarily women doing them too.

It's all a crock. Now we are free to get heart attacks and ulcers, drink too much and work too hard, just like men have all these years. The only real liberator has been birth control, the one tool for womens' emancipation that matters. Make that the only tool that matters.

Just wondering?

This story relates the tale of a guilty plea by the Toronto Fire mucky-muck who was clocked at 150kph on his way to a funeral in Kingston. He was allowed to plead down to a lesser charge of speeding from Stunt Driving. Just wonder who else can do this? Definitely not your average soccer mom or Civic roadster!

A guest piece

Submitted by William Hayes:

The Oct 1^st issue of the Globe & Mail contained an opinion piece by historian Michael Bliss claiming “Conservatives have seized the central ground of the political spectrum.” Here’s a link:

Nonsense! No political party pursuing policies such as those noted below occupies the centre of Canadian political understanding:

· blocks progress in reaching international agreement on how to deal with climate change;

· refuses to ratify the Cluster Munitions Treaty;

· inhibits the export of inexpensive HIV/AIDS drugs to suffering 3^rd world peoples;

· and, most recently, characterizes women as a “left-wing fringe group”.

We Canadians have a better understanding of the world and our place in it than these shameful Conservative policies.

Just a quick one!

Sent in by our man about Town, the cultural correspondent - WK. A small clip of Saturday's parade, a Cobourg cultural moment.

Observations from the night shift

Last week, as part of my semi-retirement, (That means that i will take anything that pays) I was driving an eighteen wheeler down the four nothing one for three trips from Ajax to Ottawa. Loblaws has decided, as part of a restructuring, the Ottawa National Gocers warehouse is to be reduced and the City of Ottawa will be reprovisioned from Ajex. Consequently convoys leave every night for a twelve to fourteen hour shift. I have been working that shift. It may have showed in less posts and probably less thoughtfulness in those posts.
So what are the impressions:

• MacDonalds has two things going for it - a well designed top for the coffee cup that contains "Keep-me-awake" coffee and the biggest bargain of all $1.39 sandwiches. Sausage mcmuffins one day and bacon cheesburger the next.
• Queen's Park stupidity - fancy shutting down 75% of the service stations on the 401 at the same time. Total insanity reigns and if the good citizens of South Cobourg object to people peeing in the Bay St bushes wait until we hear accounts of desperate peolpe urinating on the shoulders of the 401. Signs indicating gaps of 150 kms between service stations are signs designed to agitate any full bladder.
• The lack of traffic on the road since the recession started.
  

Stop the whining about needing more Doctors

Report from the MSM
"What they are not taking into account is that it's an incredibly competitive environment. We are going up against communities that have deeper pockets and are wealthier and can put more money on the table," she pointed out. She being Tracy West, the Project Manager of the Physicians' Recruitment Committee.

That's the point - the allocation of Doctors to Ontario, after each one of them has absorbed great gobs of public money for their education, should not be a bidding war. The provincial government has it all wrong, and we are approaching the problem the Rotarian way. That is to go begging for money and then give it to people who don't need it but makes the organisors look good.
There is a disconnect here, we have a local Health Centre that can't get enough patients to fully employ the designed establishment and a local committee saying we need more doctors. So who to believe?

No words yet just links

The power of the Internet and new media - take a look at this wonderful pic. Life on the modern picket line!

One from the professor - Robert Wasburn that is: here

A free for all

I will be unavailable to post regularly for the next two weeks so how about it folks - submit your opinion and really make this an open line show. Mail in the submissions to
theburdreport and I'll post it under your name or a nom-de-plume. Any topics will be fair game.

It's now official we have four candidates in NQW.

The fourth candidate of the usual four was nominated by acclamation this afternoon, in the Citizens' Forum at Victoria Hall. Pat Clark, introduced to the collected New Democrats by Patty Park, spoke for about twenty minutes and was applauded numerous times for hitting the right spots for the members. In an off the cuff discourse Pat spoke about the need to protect what progressives have built in the past - the Social Safety net. "The Social Safety Net is too important to lose!" was one line. Another was "The State should be an instrument for public good." Speaking about the new world, "We need to learn to live with a little less and provide those who can't with enough!" Stirring stuff for Social Democrats. But his speech was not buried in the past as he spoke about the need for Green Jobs and "There's lots of room for local green investment strategies and making linkages with local groups"
One of his better lines, for me, was his opening statement where he spoke about the need for change. "We need real change, not like Obama's - that's change that props up a failing system - we need fundamental change!"
Finally if you think that Pat Clark is just another young political groupie, like the other parties have, this guy has earned his chops. Patty Park told of his involvement in a pilot programme - FIVE years ago where he was working with the Help Centre and local migrant workers in Northumberland County where as a part of the job he learned to speak to them in their own language, in just a few weeks. Leaving there he went to Frontier College to mentor migrants in the tomato fields. Yep he has done hard time not just fancy constituency work.