Archanfel

Interesting development recently. HP's touchpad was the best selling tablet behind the iPad for the last while. I am guessing based on your logic, HP should have made more of those and sell them at a huge loss? If somebody is willing to sell a product or provide a service at a loss, of course people will take advantage of that. If TTC provides a service so essential to people, then I am sure people wouldn't mind paying the market price for it. ps. No, I didn't support making the TTC as an essential service. It was a short sighted knee jerk reaction.

What am I suppose to feast my eyes on? A bloated spending bill that has to be reined in? The 2.5% looks very pretty to me. Unfortunately for you, I have a vote and the people of Toronto made their voice heard loud and clear. No more high taxes, no more runaway spending. Rob Ford is not perfect, but what's the alternative? You can't even come up with an well thought alternative plan, merely a "suggest" that you yourself refuse to stand behind. Am I suppose to base on my vote on that? Sorry buddy. I guess you will have to live with Rob Ford for another three years and weep over your precious "services" whereas I got to keep my tax dollars. Three years later, who knows. The only thing for certain is I am not going to vote for a "mere suggestion". Then you wouldn't have any problem collecting the money from "most knowledgeable home owners" ? I think not. Yes, people want services, but not if it's means more taxes, especially since a lot of the spending do not benefit home owners. The rest of the GTA is another story. House prices are cheaper and population density is lower. Home owners in Toronto still pay more in absolute term. Toronto is raising the property tax 2.5%. Next year is likely to be another 2.5% or whatever the inflation is. Unfortunately, with all the provincial laws protecting a large portion of Toronto's spending and Rob Ford's weird obsession with the police, I doubt another point will cut it. I will take the 2.5% and the vehicle tax saving while I can get it. p.s. here is a far better image to feast your eyes on. http://media.thestar.topscms.com/images/42/86/f9d7077c4b0c8e26fe329cdf4aca.jpg

Are we banning fishing wild sharks? If so, I fully agree with you. Unfortunately, we are not. What we are doing will have little impact on the extinction of sharks. That's my point. If we had not cultivated potatoes, we would have the exact same problem as sharks. No wild animals or plants can sustain the ever growing number of humans. Can you imagine if we relied on wild sheep for meat? We can't even rely on herding sheep anymore. Of course, the ultimate fix is to reduce the number of people.

We should if we can. Unfortunately, elephants can't live in such cold weather. It might surprise you but many elephant reserves in Africa are funded by ivory sales to some old Chinese guy. Tigers are being farmed in China to provide bones to some old Chinese guy. Even Giant Salamander are being farmed to provide meats to some old Chinese guy. I know, disgusting, but what do I know about Salamander meat? While a bit too late, these efforts did ease the pressure on the wild population somewhat. I don't know whether they are farming sharks as well, but there's a Taiwanese business selling Tilapia fins whereas others are trying to push expensive wines as an alternative to show wealth. Banning without providing an alternative to satisfy the underlying needs is not going to work.

Such education would be more effective if they are for cyclists as well as drivers. You know that stop sign? It applies to both drivers and cyclists. While we are at it, might want to include jaywalking pedestrians as well.

Since you have nothing to support your claims (you still haven't produced any evidence that homeless shelters make homeless people into productive citizens or closing shelters would make crimes worse), I am not sure how can you back your guarantee of (things will get worse)? What things? I didn't give any weight to Rob Ford's "guarantees" and why should I believe your guarantee when you are not even specific on what you are guaranteeing? Why should I be willing to pay more taxes for your baseless guarantees? If you had guaranteed that life will get harder for the homeless, maybe I would have believed you. Then again, I would gladly pay lower taxes for that. Tell you what, if you really believe the city should raise property taxes, go tell the home owners, collect the 2.5% extra from whoever you convinced to open a private homeless shelter or fix the road or fix whatever things you think will get worse. Let us know how that works out. So far you are doing a terrible job selling your high tax idea to me. BTW, David Miller would have argued that your plan is too right wing. What do you mean by 2.5% increase per year? David Miller stayed with 3% for a while until his union friends became unsatisfied, so it went up to 3.8% and he added a whole buckets of new taxes after that. And, he implemented a bunch of service cuts anyway. Are you sure you are not a conservative for charging only 5% over two years? How can you even face the poor union members and homeless people? If Rob Ford has done anything that is to make 5% over two years sound reasonable to people like you. After 4 years, even left wing politicians would not dare raise property taxes above the inflation again whereas 4 years ago, we could only dream about 2.5% property tax increases.

I never said poverty, crimes and drugs are not linked, and I never said it's simple. Nothing is simple in life. Life throws things at you, me and everybody. You are here posting an an internet forum, guess what, you are probably luckier than 90% of the world's population. A person can't control fate. What a person can control is to make whatever choices presented to him and stand by those choices. Yes, poverty may cause a person to be depressed, or associate with the wrong people. However, nobody can force you to use drugs, it's your own choice. There are drug dealers who never use drugs and they don't allow their kids to use drugs. If you made the choice to use drugs, then don't blame society for your choices. I am not going to say much about mental illness. If somebody is sick enough, he should be in a hospital. If not, then live with it like everybody else. Nobody's gene is perfect. I would give them some leeway to blame their parents though since some parents are simply not responsible. Just don't blame me or society at large. And no matter how complex a city is, it can not live beyond its means in the long term just like any household. Raise taxes or reduce spending, simple as that, you advocate the former and I advocate the later. I don't see how is your solution more complex than mine. The only difference is you believe it's the government's job to make the choices for people, that the government can spend people's money more wisely than themselves, I believe while that's true in some very rare cases, the downfall of communism proved you wrong. Oddly enough, liberalism is all about individual choices, so I dare to say I am far more liberal than you are. Communism has nothing to do with liberalism. Both communism and conservatism believe people can't make choices and a higher authority knows better. They simply have different definition of "better" and "higher authority". And how can you guarantee that with a 5% tax raise, the road is going to get any better. After 8 years of Miller's high taxes, did the roads get any better? Did the roads get worse over the last year? If we shift some money from affordable housing to road maintenance, why can't we have it both ways? Are you saying that homeless people will actively dig holes on the road? ps. I am not the one throwing insults and name calling around, so you might want to consider your own words before calling others immature.

Let's be honest here, it has nothing to do with sharks or we would have been working with the Hong Kong government rather than banning shark fins here. It was an easy choice to score some political points because it only impacts a very small minority of the society and does not cost jobs in Canada. Europeans banned seal pelts for the same reason. Even if it was about sharks, and I agree finning is a terrible practice, target the practice itself. Or better yet, farm sharks and produce cheaper fins, bankrupt the fishermen who does finning. Banning shark fin in Toronto will accomplish nothing. On the contrary, it's likely the Chinese community feel so marginalized that the ban will backfire. Of course, I don't think the politicians will care since it was never about sharks, it was about scoring some cheap political points.

Unless Horvath and Hudak can come up with a way of either making up the lost revenue or reduce spending, this kind of motion is pretty pointless. While I am generally against taxes, replacing income taxes with consumption taxes is actually a good thing. I will be happy if the government can find some savings (like stop defined benefit pensions starting from the MPPs) and remove the HST, but not if it means higher debt or higher income taxes.

The only awareness you raised is some people in Canada is hypocritical and discriminative against minorities. Banning the usage of all wild animals (including fish oils, wild salmon consumption and seal pelts), then maybe you got a point.

When did I ever say being lazy and greedy is "bad"? Both laziness and greed are the result of natural selection. You got one species chase every moving thing whereas another only moves when they are hungry, guess which species would survive? Laziness preserves energy unless necessary, greed accumulates energy faster. Both ensure the survival of the species. Being "bad" is not human nature, the result of millions of years of evolution is. Of course, humans are social animals, which means the society needs to be efficient and productive. Nature did not erase laziness and greed from individual, rather human evolved into various form of organizations to motivate people and maintain social order.

Unlike you, I have no prejudice against drugs. It's a personal choice. I advice my kids against it because its destructive nature, but it's ultimately their choices. I would not finance their habit, I would not allow it in my house, I would also not allow them to use it as an excuse to be less accomplished. If they are willing to work 10 times harder to finance both their life and their drug habit, kudos to them. I don't blame my kids (or other people) for their choices, I simply ask them to pay for them. Of course, I don't have THAT much faith in them, so I am still going to advice against it. Not because it's morally wrong, but because avoiding drugs makes life easier. You sounded like drugs are being forced into people at gun point. How is that not their own choices? They chose a path of drug uses, they are responsible to dig themselves out of it. You reap what you sow. How many people did homeless shelters help turning into productive citizens? If there were so many, why should we pay for shelters rather than these "productive" citizens? The shelters should finance themselves by being productive, no? Back to the budget, many hard working Canadians have been able to keep their spending below inflation, why can't the city of Toronto? The era of free spending is coming to an end, whether you like it or not. If you don't like what Ford had cut, come up with your own list. Torontonians are tired of ever raising taxes. If you got the extra money, be sure to donate them instead of blaming the government for not collecting them.

Yes. http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/1020450--cyclist-fractures-pedestrian-s-skull-gets-400-fine

How about mandate all cyclists to have a cage around the rider like all cars do? I can guarantee you it's far more effective than side guards. Yet cyclists aren't even willing to pay for a helmet. Another way of getting side guards installed quickly is to tax all cyclists to pay for them. Would you be willing to do that? You know that riding on the sidewalk is illegal and a danger to both the pedestrians and yourself, right? A turning vehicle wouldn't expect something zooming off a sidewalk. It's far safer to ride beside the vehicle where the driver can see you.

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My point is that you can't make it stop by banning shark fins in Toronto, but not in Markham. You can't even make it stop by banning it in Canada, but not in Hong Kong. It's stupid. We have laws that govern fishing, but we didn't ban eating fishes in certain cities, did we? China is probably one of the "other countries", their fishermen drove their seafood stocks to the verge of collapse (probably did collapse). Yet China is the biggest seafood producer today because they "domesticated" all kinds of fishes and shrimps. Environmentalists didn't save their wild fishes, capitalists did. Instead of paying lip services to protecting sharks that we both know would do next to nothing, we perhaps should get off our moral high horse and making domesticating sharks a profitable business. Only then would the wild shark population be saved. BTW, did you know the Chinese domesticated salmons? They keep them in a large cage, artificially feed them and sell them around the world. Who knew if raising salmons is even economically viable? But the Chinese tried and succeeded. Now environmentalists will tell you fish farming is bad for the environment and bad for people eating them. Animal lovers will tell you it's cruel to the fishes. So judge it for yourself. Should we ban salmon eating or should we find some creative way of preserving the wild stocks.

Not if Toronto has a shark farm that can supply fins at 50% of the price as these "other countries" as long as people are clear this is for the preservation of the species rather than animal welfare (to keep price down, these farm sharks will likely be abused, I don't want to hear a peep from you guys). You can even flood the market with fake shark fins. Never fight the greed, let it fight itself. You just need to give it a push in the right direction.

I ride in Toronto and illegally parked cars causes far more slow down than bikes in downtown. Learn to change lanes in busy traffic and be patient if you want to drive in downtown. I have never seen a bike slowing down a major arteries outside downtown. Bikes usually avoid these streets and there are plenty of side roads for them. The only problems are bridges across highways.

Then target the practice. Encourage legal fin supplies to push poachers out of the market. You can't fight against greed, it's a lost battle. Use greed to fight greed. Don't tell me you seriously think banning shark fins in Toronto would do anything. Banning it in Hong Kong, maybe, even then it would flourish in the black market. That's human nature. You have to find an alternative supply. Alternatively, remember what happened at maple leaf? wink, wink.

Neither massive trucks nor bicycles are that common on "main arteries of traffics" and most "arteries" have more than one lane. Trucks go across lanes frequently. For example, when they turn, they usually takes up the inner lane as well. Drivers learn to be careful around trucks and truck drivers learn to be careful around other cars. We simply need the same respect between drivers and cyclists. I both drive and bike. When driving in downtown, I always double check for cyclist when turning. And I always try to go with the flow of traffic when cycling (i.e. don't pass on the right all the time, it's frustrating to having to pass the same bicycle multiple times) and give plenty of hand signals. It's just common courtesy.

Then don't get into the same lane at the same time if it's not safe to do so. That's the basic courtesy. A large truck should not get into the same lane as a bicycle and vice versa. A truck should wait behind a bicycle if the bicycle is there first. A bicycle should wait behind a truck if the truck is there first. Only when passing, should a truck get into the same lane, it should still leave enough space for the bicycle, use part of another lane if necessary.

Yet killing sharks for other things is perfectly acceptable? How about killing cows for their meat? Or killing potatoes for their roots? Where do we draw the line? If you really care about sharks then you should encourage eating shark fins and thus build an industry of raising sharks for their fins.

I really wouldn't call the Toronto Sun as real journalism. A real journalist shouldn't have prejudice or at least should be open minded. That's not the feeling I got from reading the Toronto Sun. On the flip side, neither is the Toronto Star.

While I am big advocate of well designed bike lanes, it's simply not practical to have all the road fixed. In the mean time, it's important that both drivers and cyclists show courtesy. A bike shouldn't be on the right of a right turning vehicle if it wasn't there 2 seconds ago and a driver shouldn't reaches down to the stereo without keeping an eye on the road. The problem is such courtesy is not possible when the blaming game is being played for political gains.

I would have no problem saying that to people who refuse to build a life for themselves no matter what, but I don't think there are a lot of those people in Toronto. It's always amazes me that you people treat the homeless and under privileged as forever handicapped. I have full faith in every person's ability. My mantra is "I work hard to earn a life and if you work hard, you will get yours". I have no problem kicking my kids out of the house when they are 18, not because I don't love them, but because I have faith in them.