overthere

Personally, I'd enjoy watching the CRTC try to ensure that we all watch 30% Canadian content on the Internet.

Except for the regime of Trudeau The Elder, with his relentless and clueless intervention in many areas of the economy including wage/price controls, the NEP , discouraging foreign investment and so on.

check the voting records on same sex marriage, a classic 'vote of conscience' to determine who was whipped and who was not. Then get back to us on that.

Correct and teachers love parents who are both informed ad involved in teaching values to their own children. It frees them to do their job. If only that was possible. In the meantime, they are teaching kids not to punch people in the face randomly, stop stealing at will, why doing school work is important, when and why we say please and thank you..... and so on.

In what specific way?

Things like civics are part of the curriculum. I did not say they hate teaching it in any form, I said they were willing to reinforce values taught by parents. Unfortunately, so often kids come to school now with little idea on how to work and play with others, basic manners are absent. That's what they hate, having to assume the role of parents in order to get their jobs done. In the main, their job is and should be teaching a curriculum of instruction. Every moment spent otherwise is a waste of expensive resources, and cheats those children whose parents have taught them how to behave with other people. I'm not talking about normal class discipline which is something everybody has to learn.

Except Furyk has an absolutely horrible record at the Ryder, he is worse than deadweight, more of an automatic loss. That is no disrespect to him, just the facts. Mickelson has been average at best, and has displayed that he has zero leadership. IMO he just took himself out of contention for any kind of captain position. This competition has a team score, but golf is not a team game. There is no dynamic response to what the other team does, each golfers objective is not to stop the other guy but to personally get the little white ball into the hole. So team strategy, all the blah blah about pairings is nearly meaningless. The Americans lost because nearly all their players did not play well enough to beat the Yurpeens. Thats what is so annoying about Mickelson, he's blasting Watson while personally failing to achieve anything noteworthy, again. I would not want Mickelson on my team, he creates anarchy while creating little and refusing personal responsibility.

One factor in decreased military spending is that we are not fighting a ground war in Asia today. I wonder if MPs have been allowed to donate $200 million to Liberal friendly ad agencies in the last 8 years?

Nope. He has had five years and a big bump in budget and gained nothing in wins. In pro sports, that is a big fail.

The Jays have many. many leaks in their boat and they will be challenged to plug them. They will have to and should pay Cabrera a bunch. If he wanted to stay here, why didn't he sign a fat extension with them this year? Reviewing just some of their lineup, who would be kept based on performance? Baustista: MVP caliber season. they have to extend him now or trade him soon, no other options work. Will he want to continue with the endless 'rebuild'? I doubt it. Lind: not worth the money Rasmus: no Morrow: no Janssen: no almost the whole bullpen: no Reyes: declining range this year and a huge huge salary Fransisco : no Tolleson: no Valencia: maybe Gose: back to the minors Goins: back to the minors Kawasaki: back to the minors Navarro: keep Lawrie: will he ever not be hurt? EE: keep Dickey: blah, getting old Buerhle: see above Happ: journeyman, keep for now Stroman: keep Pompey: keep as long as he hits Alex A is always full of optimism what else can he do? But based on performance, which is the yardstick in pro sports, he deserves to be fired.

Let the carnage begin. They need to focus on retaining some of their good players. It won't be easy.

Obviously the Americans need to drop all the old geezers like Mickelson, Furyk and just start over with the kids. Maybe forget about having a captain at all, just let the players take full responsibility for the pairings and the outcome.

It's an OUTRAGE!!!! (sorry I was channeling Mulcair and/or any NDP backbencher for just a sec there)

Incorrect. The responsibility for teaching values is primarily that of parents. Of course, teachers spend a lot of time with children most weekdays, but they cannot and should not take the lead. They can reinforce what parents do, of course. I do not abdicate this responsibility with my children. Teachers hate having to teach children how to behave , beyond the boundaries of normal classroom discipline.

???? I have no idea from whence you pluck these goofy numbers. What I said is that the benefit package is about 55%, as stated in post 251 above. That's the average cost of employer cost including EI payments, CPP employer contributions, health and dental plans, disability plan premiums, average holiday pay, average sick leave and and many other things. Oh, and the common 37.5 hour work week in the public sector also bumps up that employment cost premium. Every employer has these costs to some degree, public sector employers have them to the largest degree. So- roughly- if your salary is a modest $50k, it will cost around $77500 in actual costs for employment. It varies quite a bit in the private sector, but one thing never varies- it is less than the feds. I guess you've never been in business, because costing out labour to determine chargeout rates is a basic element of any business. If you do not know these things, your chance of profitability is near zero. It was also a major part of the consultancy I was once involved with, and that very much included calculating these very things.

I thought that wasd neo-conservatism. I am so confused. In any case, I demand the government stop giving hue breaks to anybody, nobody should get a discount on colours.

There are many, many teachers who are sick unto death with being obliged to teach 'values' to children. Many of them see that as being primarily the role of parents, or whomever the parent may delegate that task to, like a religious instructor. Somehow, it has all become become incumbent on teachers.

Are the Liberals going to campaign on a promise to repeal this free trade deal? Is Sheila Copps going to ..... sorry, flashback there....

The Hair has the entire Tory party gibbering in fear.

At one time the cost of benefits to the federal government was around 55% . Every dollar of salary paid had $.55 of employer costs added on. That of course did not include any part of the truly whopping unfunded liability for pension benefits, estimated to be around $300 billion. Future generations will curse both civil service pensioners and our successive governments who have allowed defined benefit pensions for far too long. Ironically the vast majority of taxpayers have no recourse to plump defined benefit pensions, while paying forever for those who do get them.

Correct. They make about $45,000 per year plus a whopping benefit and pension package. About 30% more than private sectors staff doing very similar work, with less benefits, and generally higher consequences of error. That's what makes complaints of 1% raises to already inflated salaries so annoying. Has anybody wondered about the OP premise yet? If Harper hates the civil service so much, why does he hire so many of them in the last eight years?

It also means that in 100% of the ridings, constituents elected the person that was the most popular in that constituency. Nothing in that suggests that a politician does not represent all the constitutents. It's a secret ballot, he or she does not know who specifically voted for them. Voting for or against the winner does not gain you more or less representation from that winner.

If Canadian culture is represented by what CBC TV provides in their content, then it is not worth saving. Their hallmark is poorly written, poorly presented and amateur rubbish that nobody watches.

Thats what happens when you have multiple parties. Shrug.

Recent poll on national priorities by CNN in US: Locally, the #1 priority is likely the lack of a second line centre with the hockey season about to start.