There's an interesting article in the Star today talking about the Ontario Liberal Party cheating the election system by having what are essentially fake lobby groups do advertising on their behalf.

I think the real story however is in the money that's changing hands in the process.

I read most of the article to mean "These guys gave thousands to the Liberal Party, who turned around and gave millions back to them from the taxpayers pockets".

That's huge bundles of our money being used to reward people for giving much less money to the Liberal Party. At the end of the day, the Liberal Party is giving millions of dollars to their friends and keeping a good chunk of it for themselves. Here's just a small example:

Coalition chair Gary O'Neill, who is on vacation and couldn't be reached, is also president of International Union Of Operating Engineers Local 793, which held a Liberal fundraiser at the union hall attended by McGuinty on June 22, 2006. Local 793 has donated $66,389 to the Liberals between 2003 and 2006. Two months ago, the government gave Local 793 a $1.98 million grant for its training centre.

It sounds like misappropriation to me. I can't help but be reminded of all the stealing Jean Cretien and Paul Martin were doing just recently. Like father like son? I guess it's "like federal, like provincial".

Mayor Miller seems to be all butt-hurt over the fact that city council turned down his proposals on how to gouge the residents of Toronto for more money.

Now he has to cut costs, and one such cost being cut is a 1.2 million dollar renovation to his own office.

How the hell can an office renovation cost 1.2 million dollars?? Does he not live in the same world that the rest of us do? Does he not realize that most of the people in the city he is governing can't even dream about some day owning a home that might cost anywhere near what he felt justified in spending to renovate his office?

This guy is a joke. The fact that he approved this project in the first place while crying about how broke our city is shows plainly where his priorities lie.

I'm sure the city has more than enough money from the taxes we're paying now. If it weren't for the politicians spreading it around amongst themselves and their friends, we wouldn't have to hear about how tight the purse strings are.

I wonder if now is still a good time to get into the plastic bin making business. Of course, I'd need friends in the right places to make that profitable…

Dalton McGuinty has just announced that he will give $650 million to the auto industry to promote the development of greener cars.

By my calculation, assuming everyone was contributing equally (which they sure as hell are not), $50 of that is mine and I bloody well want it back!

The car companies are spending their own resources to develop green technology because it's what's going to generate more business for them and make them more money. I don't need the government handing them my money to try and drag them out of debt and help them be profitable.

I'd much rather have that $50 to buy another tank of gas!

It's interesting to note that when he was last elected, he ripped me off for hundreds of dollars because we apparently can't afford our overly generous health care system. Now he's giving money away to giant car corporations?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, anyone who votes for McGuinty's Ontario Liberals this time around has got to be just plain stupid. They've proven themselves to be just as trustworthy as the Federal Liberal party, and are only doing their part to help themselves to our money, while liberating us of whatever little bit of it we're currently allowed to keep and spend.

I'm forced to question the motivation behind the new return system for bottles to the LCBO.

What is the value in this? Why do they want you to bring them the bottles rather than just leaving them at the curb in the recycle bin with the rest of your glassware?

With Brewers Retail (The Beer Store), it is understandable. They want the bottles back because they are an integral part of the network that allows beer bottles to be efficiently reused in Ontario. By taking them back in an unbroken state, nicely organized, they are reducing the cost of recycling them and helping keep the cost of beer down for those who use them. I commend that.

The LCBO is different though. They have no such network. They are not part of any recycling system that will benefit from the bottles going through them. So far as I can tell, there is no good reason for them to accept returns other than to collect the deposits as a tax and profit on any bottles that get recycled through more convenient methods.

The Ontario Liberals can pretend they're being environmentally conscious with this nonsense, but the fact is that we already have perfectly good ways of recycling bottles and this isn't helping things. I don't think that people who can't be bothered to put the bottles in the recycle bin instead of the trash will be driven by the prospect of a shiny new dime to pack them over to the LCBO and return them.

In the end, it's just their way of stealing a little more from us.

All I've really got to say about this is Amen.

Article from The Star

I don't seem to qualify as "youth" anymore for the purposes of this article, but it really addresses all the things my generation has to deal with.

I hate to sound like I'm whining, but it's nice to see things quantified in such a way that you can immediately see how much harder we have it than our parent's generation did.

It seems that as we enter our 30's, we're only now entering the same stage of life as our parents were in when they were barely midway through their 20's.

And really, I've got nothing to complain about. Things have worked out for me about as well as I could have expected them to given the cards I've been dealt. For others, there's far more obstacles to deal with. What does society expect us to do?

Of course, I don't agree with the solution offered at the end of the article. We don't need to give the poor more money by raising the minimum wage. What we need to do is allow everyone a greater percentage of their earnings to be of actual use to them.

We need more tax dollars to go into education to make it more accessible or at least some sort of interest free student loan program. We also need lower taxes in general so we're not using such a high percentage of our earnings for the bare necessities.

If our parents could pay less taxes and the country didn't go bankrupt for lack of funds, then surely we can do the same.

Of course, first the government would have to stop squandering our money away and actually be accountable for their fiscal actions. Hopefully the current government continues on their path of ferreting out waste and trimming the fat. We can only hope.

I can only think that nothing good will come of this. 🙁

If all we've been told is true then the world is certainly better off without him but you can bet his followers (or opportunists) will make him out to be a martyr and the violence in Iraq will escalate.

They should have probably just left him to rot away in prison.

Interesting and probably frightening times are coming.

The provincial government has voted themselves a 25% pay raise, the theiving bastards.

They're doing a piss poor job of running the province, stealing money from us left and right, most recently through the power company and Children's Aid Society, and now they're just handing themselves more money for no reason.

If they honestly felt that the job deserved such higher pay, they should have passed the bill and had it take effect following the next election. At least then they could be voted out before they benefit from it.

As it is, they just dipped their collective hands into the pockets of this province's taxpayers and stole themselves a nice Christmas gift.

Bastards.

Where the hell do you get an $8000 leather jacket???

Our Tax Dollars at Work

I was going to title this "Liberals Are Stealing Our Money Again" but I suspect they've never really stopped since they were outed the last time.

It's just a different bunch of them at this particular time.

This time it's the Ontario Liberal Party stealing from our coffers.

The report focuses on children's aid societies in Toronto, Peel, York and Thunder Bay, which together account for about one-quarter of total spending. The instances of questionable spending on international travel include $1,700 for an all-inclusive trip to a resort in St. Martin and $4,000 for a one-week trip to St. Lucia for a caseworker to accompany a child returning to his biological family. As well, the report says, a senior staff member attended a Beijing conference unrelated to his duties or society business.

Senior staff at one unnamed society had a fleet of 50 cars, including two SUVs worth $53,000 and $59,000. Society staff logged fewer than 10,000 kilometres a year on half of the cars, suggesting such a large fleet was unnecessary, the report says. One staff member who used a society-owned car also received an allowance of $600 a month for his personal car.

One of the societies — also unnamed — could not produce detailed receipts for most meals and entertainment expenses. Numerous expenditures of hundreds of dollars at a time were made at high-end restaurants, the report alleges. "We understand that many of these meals were for society staff only and significantly exceeded the established meal allowance," it adds.

And what's their response to all this?

Marcelo Gomez-Wiuckstern, a spokesman for the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, said he regrets that he cannot respond to the allegations until next Tuesday.

"Child welfare workers conduct more than 82,000 investigations every year, with urgent cases always receiving the highest priority, and they improve the lives of tens of thousands of children every year," he said.

Basically, they're saying that because they're doing some of what their job is supposed to be… apparently that justifies pissing away our money on vacations and elaborate dinners. I'll bet if they ask some of the kids what that money would best be spent on, they might get a different opinion.

I seem to recall having read something stating that our city councellors made around $40k/yr.

Turns out, I was very wrong.

Apparently they're getting a pay raise from $87,214 to $95,000 per year.

Maybe the next time elections come around, I should be putting my bitching and complaining to somewhat more productive use!

Of course, I'd have to do away with whatever morality I've come to pride myself with over the years and embrace the corruption and greed that drives our political system.

That would suck.

I wonder how long I'd last before someone put a hit out on me for not being corrupt enough?