mentalfloss
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Posts posted by mentalfloss
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Close the pools and libraries and buy up some used xboxes and ps2's for the poor underprivileged children. Nothing keeps a kid out of the street better than a game console.
I can get behind that.
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How councillors coalesced to defeat Mayor Rob Ford
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s budget finale, they beseeched each other to include their cherished services on a list that could be rescued in one dramatic vote.
The centre, left- and right-leaning councillors who coalesced into a force mighty enough to scuttle Mayor Rob Ford’s budget cuts often used a dramatic metaphor for the intense negotiations.
Each was walking up to a lifeboat and saying: “Save my child!” while others figured out how much the service would cost in terms of budget surplus dollars and ill-will that could cost them a majority in the Hail Mary vote.
“We kept saying if we put too many people in the lifeboat it will capsize,” said Councillor Shelley Carroll, the former budget chief who was among 23 to vote in favour of the surprise omnibus motion, swamping Ford’s 21 allies.
“Children” that didn’t make it into the boat, like Sarah Doucette’s fight to save the High Park Zoo, were put forward as separate, individual motions.
The mutiny started weeks ago, before Christmas, as centrist councillors and their frequent adversaries on the left separately plotted. About two weeks ago, rookie centrists including Josh Colle, Ana Bailão, Josh Matlow and Mary-Margaret McMahon reached out to their sometime adversaries.
Carroll and the others on the left, who had pooled their staff resources to create notes analyzing cuts to various departments, were receptive. Furious negotiations erupted through BlackBerry messages, shared online Google documents and meetings in and out of City Hall.
They reached right to conservatives and got a hearing from many and eventual support from two: Gloria Lindsay Luby, whose residents had given hear an earful about cuts, including mechanical leaf collection in her ward, and James Pasternak, a usual Ford ally worried about the budget’s impact on the poor.
“It was exactly how city hall should work — people coming together out of shared concerns for their city and figuring out, creatively, how we can make it better in a fiscally responsible way,” Matlow said.
Councillors communicated directly to each other, many sidelining their own staff to keep secret the delicate conversations on how to thwart cuts to pools, arenas, TTC service, homeless shelters, daycares and more.
At the same time, Ford’s staff was trolling the hallways of City Hall’s second floor, looking for votes for his proposed budget and trying to dismantle any consensus to dip into the $154 million surplus.
Those crafting the omnibus motion got a scare when a note was accidentally printed on purple paper. Councillor Doug Ford spotted opponents sharing the document during the budget committee wrapup and sounded the alarm because purple is reserved for confidential council documents.
They worked through the weekend, refining the numbers, counting the votes, and were confident Tuesday morning when Colle unleashed the motion to restore $15 million in spending.
But Ford allies tried all day to swing a vote or two their way and coalition members feared their majority had slipped away. Pasternak got frequent visits from Councillor Jaye Robinson and was summoned to a backstage meeting with Ford himself.
“I should have a StairMaster here to ward off all the stress,” Pasternak said with a chuckle, adding Ford “offered me very constructive encouragement” but, in the end, they agreed to disagree.
Coalition members whooped with joy at the 23-21 vote Tuesday evening, and the grins stayed put as council approved a further roughly $5 million in spending to prevent other cuts.
“This spirit of compromise,” Pasternak said, “is why Toronto is such a great city.”
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Wow.. this thread got off to a pretty biased start, lol
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What is so funny, do you think man put it there?
Well first off, it's not a spill if it's contained.
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Is the oil sands not a major oil spill? Caused by mother earth? And by processing the sands is the same as cleaning up a old gas station?
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They projected a 1.5% increase in spending. They are doing much better than that projection after the first half of the year.
For now.
What's more reprehensible is the fact that two thirds of the federal agencies aren't revealing what they had to cut to get there. Not exactly the kind of transparency the CPC championed itself it to be, but we all know how well they keep up with transparency measures.
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What are you talking about? Where does it say that in your link?
They project a 1.5% increase in spending.
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Party's over.
Spending will be up in 2012.
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Why Drummond’s doomsday report is not all bad for the Premier
To understand why that is, it helps to bear in mind that – from the perspective of Mr. McGuinty and his Finance Minister, Dwight Duncan – Mr. Drummond’s commission on public-service reform is increasingly being viewed as an exercise in table-setting.
The government might have hoped, when it struck the commission last spring, that all the answers to get out of deficit would be provided. But while it still might find considerable value in many of the report’s roughly 400 recommendations, the report is unlikely to be the blueprint for the next provincial budget. Instead, the Liberals are clearly hoping that Mr. Drummond’s doom-and-gloom will provide political cover for their own, somewhat milder austerity plan.
The Liberals probably won’t commit to getting annual spending increases in health care below 3 per cent, as Mr. Drummond has proposed; they certainly won’t scrap their own signature education policies. If they reject Mr. Drummond’s unusually pessimistic forecast of 2-per-cent economic growth in perpetuity, and bring in some additional revenues by cancelling planned corporate tax cuts, they should generally be able to promise fewer cutbacks than the ones Mr. Drummond will call for.
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Had Rob Ford said this people would be freaking out on him.
Are you comparing Rob Ford to Drummond or McGuinty?
We have no idea exactly what and how things will be cut until the report comes out so hold on to your booties.
And Rob Ford's cuts are stupid considering what he's cutting, how little he's getting for it, and that the city is in a surplus.
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Flaherty's cuts to provincial transfers and the exuberant salaries of CEOs in the med profession are forcing their hand on healthcare.
These are meaty, legitimate cuts that they'll have to make as opposed to shutting down a zoo or library.
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As for the link between religion and democracy - that's more of a philosophical argument - but one that has a lot of merit. People who believe in something higher than themselves would seem to be more likely to have a better defined value system.
Of course, but this association is just a cover for the fact that there are still more people in the world who rely on religion as a conduit for ethical behaviour. Since the turn of the 19th century, ethics philosophers have been correct in defining the parameters of ethics based on virtue or consequence.
Once society becomes more educated on the true nature of ethics, we'll be able to shed our religious skin and evolve from this outdated system - hopefully to some variant of utilitarianism or sustainable development.
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If that is the case I wonder who the federal Conservatives have morphed into?
The Reforrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm party.
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Here's a snippet from the ad:
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So the unemployment rate won't change?
Wow.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
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There's no question that Rob Ford is not the most polished talkers. That's why you can easily tell when he was lying during the election. Black Dog seems to think the entire population fell for his lies, I think Torontonians are smarter than that. What do you think? Do you think most people in the city are ideological, selfish, ignorant or gullible?
Umm.. I'm pretty sure that the core of T.O. voted for Smitherman while the 905'ers voted for Ford.
It's the people who believe that cutting taxes is the solution to everything that got hoodwinked.
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Apparently the government ensures that private insurance companies can maintain a 12% profit margin.
Apparently.
We should do a breakdown of the entire report Attawapiskat-style.
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I never knew we had public auto insurance in Ontario!
This must be McGuinty's fault.
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What did they lie about?
They said the project would be around $14 Billion, but it will actually be around $40 Billion. They also said that these planes will bolster our defense, but they can't even communicate with each other in the arctic.
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I couldn't agree more because the last thing anyone would want is a federal surplus. Can you imagine??
Oh. The horror...
It was a shame that the deficit target was pushed back to 2013. What with the fact that Canada has 'the best economy in the world'.
Perhaps we should keep a running list of the lies...
Bev Oda (budgetary allocations)
Tony Clement (staff census change recommendations)
Peter McKay (helicopter usage)
John Duncan (native housing situation)
Am I missing anything?
Someone should double-check with Stephen Harper to find out exactly what his definition of accountable and transparent means.
Add another one on Peter McKay and Julian Fantino for lying about F-35 costs and the usefulness of the plane in the arctic.
And as I mentioned above, Jim Flaherty for misrepresenting our deficit target.
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So opinion pieces you agree with: Good Journalism.
Opinion pieces you disagree with: Propaganda.
lol wut?
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And here's court stenographer/horrible person Sue-Ann Levy essentially arguing that layoffs are necessary because unemployment should be spread around.
If you think she's bad, wait until you see the Mayor's former media advisor penning Op-Eds and spreading propaganda on Talk radio.
Thomas Mulcair is a French Citizen
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted
People are still arguing about this?
It's such a non-issue.