You either pay attention or pay through the nose. I would rather pay attention.
On July 1st, 2008, a BC Carbon Tax took effect. Lefties say it won’t affect gas prices. The chart below begs to differ. The average gas price in BC was $1.40 for a consistent length of time and then July 1st it spiked over 2 cents. Coincidence?? I think not.
I hope Canadians are paying more attention to this than Stephane Dion is!!
You can view various gas price statistics by visiting this link.
Just another example of Canadian Taxpayers getting OfficiallyScrewed.
I got sent this video clip by a friend. It is SO officiallyscrewed, I had to put it up on the OS Youtube Channel.
Click the video below ONCE to begin watching.
If the video above did not start playing for you, you can try clicking the link below instead to view in a new window.
You would have thought they would have learned the first time around with the sponsorship scandal.
Click the above video ONCE to view. If that does not work for your browser, click the link below to view the whole video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpLX-gFkvhs
But don’t believe me…download the Liberal flyer yourself!
From their site.
or if removed
Let’s look at some numbers (again).
Yellow Bellied McShifty, by his party’s own admission, says that the per capita cost to funding the current public school system is $9,526 per child.
The statistics show that there are approximately 55,000 children in faith based schools that are not receiving funding.
I must point out here that schools get their funding based on a per “butt on the seat” aspect. i.e. if a child is not in a school seat the school does NOT get funding. This is VERY important for people to understand.
What it means is that while everyone in the province pays taxes, funding a faith based school would NOT take money out of the current system. In fact, it would inject money INTO our education system because people who have already made the decision to have their children go to a faith based school would now get funding. How much?
Well the math is easy. $9,526 x 55,000 children is approximatley $524 Million.
What does McShifty do with this money at this point in time? He keeps it to spend on other things. Like what you ask?
Those taxes collected from the parents of children in faith based schools gets spent on scandals like the $1 Million that went to a cricket club when they only asked for $150,000. Tie in the other end of year budget shopping sprees and we get…
Total Wasted: $32 Million
It also get’s spent on provincial advertising campaigns for Caledonia that line the pockets of Liberal supporters and their families.
Total Wasted: $50,000
It goes to fund the pockets of Liberals and Liberal cronies such as Jane Stewart and David Peterson for negotiating with criminals like the natives in Caledonia.
It goes to buy land so that the OPP doesn’t have to do their job and clean out criminal land squatters in Caledonia who resort to violence.
Total Wasted: $55 Million
It goes to pay lawyers to fight against funding for autistic kids and, even more so, it goes to paying lawyers to fight to hide the cost of that fight!!! How OfficiallyScrewed is that???
Total Wasted: $2.4M on the first case and an unknown amount fighting both NDP MPP Shelley Martel and the Privacy Commissioner.
The list could go on and on.
Here’s some more math. The Health tax that McShifty brought down shortly after promising not to raise taxes brought the province of Ontario approximately $2.6 BILLION a year in revenue.
Wake up Ontario. It’s Tory Time.
Italy uses a Mixed Member Proportional system and from what I can see, they have one of the most Officially Screwed electoral system in the world.
They have over 40 political parties (Strike 1) of which the majority are tied in to two coalitions.
But because the Italian system incorporates a 4% minimum in order to garner some of the assigned proportionality seats, the coalition with the most votes is not the party forming the government because they have more parties with less than 4% of the vote in their coalition. (Strike 2)
Strike 3 is attributed to the fact that an MMP system will let every small interest group form a party in an effort to garner 4% of the vote and get a representative in the assembly. The proposed system for Ontario would only require 3% making it that much more fringe party friendly. Here is a brief list of some of the party names.
Daisy-Democracy is Freedom Party
Rose in the Fist Party
Italian Radicals
Party of Italian Communists
S.O.S. Italy Party
In reading a few of the other names, I would imagine that it wouldn’t be long before we had political parties dedicated to core unions such as:
“The Teachers Union Party”
or
“The United Auto Workers Party”. (I would give you one guess at who would lead this one.)
Then we have New Zealand. This country had a two party system from 1909 to 1996 when they moved to a proportional system. What would Ontario have to look forward to with an MMP system?
New Zealand has a strong party system in place. The first political party was founded in 1891, and its main rival was founded in 1909 — from that point until a change of electoral system in 1996, New Zealand had a two-party system in place. Today, New Zealand has a genuinely multi-party system, with eight parties currently represented in Parliament. Neither of the two largest parties have been able to govern without support from other groups since 1996, meaning that coalition government is required.
The two largest, and oldest, parties are the Labour Party (centre-left progressive) and the National Party (centre-right conservative). Other parties currently represented in Parliament are New Zealand First (populist, nationalist), ACT (free market), the Greens (left-wing, environmentalist), United Future (family values), the Progressives (leftist), and the Māori Party (ethnic).
I think that MMP will create more headaches in trying to form coalitions than allowing the government of the day to lead the people and the province. Stick to “First Past The Post”. The current system may not always get your favourite party in power, but whomever is in power will be able to run the show without having to make a bunch of back room deals for support.
First Past The Post has my vote on Election Day.
Below is a reprint of a post I put up on July 7th, 2006. I think this is important so that Ontarians realize what kind of government they are dealing with. The term “sponsorship scandal” does not only apply to federal Liberals.
Liberal … Advertising … Is Your Spidey sense Tingling Now Too?
Well it should be.
Steve Janke has done it again. In an incredible excercise of digging up the dirt, he may have just caught that Yellow Bellied McShifty with his pants down.
It is no secret that businesses in Caledonia are suffering because of the land dispute. The provincial government, run by the Liberals under Premier Dalton McGuinty, has offered to help.
In true Liberal fashion, they are offering to help with advertising.
…
An advertising agency that works in the Hamilton area called Play Advertising was awarded the contract.
The head of the firm is Brian Torsney. His sister is Paddy Torsney, a former Member of Parliament for Burlington for the federal Liberals. Burlington is near Hamilton. From 1985 to 1989, she was a special assistant to David Peterson, at the time the Liberal premier of Ontario.
The same David Peterson who was assigned the task of negotiating on behalf of the province in the Caledonia dispute.
Interesting.
Interesting indeed. I highly urge you all to go read this.
I think we are, once again, getting Officially Screwed by a Liberal and their ad agency friends.
Not only was the pension fund being mismanaged but now we have the ex-Commissioner of the RCMP blowing tax dollars on expensive alcohol.
At a modest 16% income tax rate, the average person would have to earn $500 to generate $80 of taxes so that Julian “Livin’ The High Life” Zaccardelli could expense that $80/Glass Cognac.
Just something to chew on if you want to get your blood pressure up.
Talk about getting OfficiallyScrewed!!
Not 24 hours after Al Gore’s movie won an Oscar, he gets awarded the big booby prize. The hypocrisy that this man shows is on the grandest scale.
Last night (Feb. 25, 2007), Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.
Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).
In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.
The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.
Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.
Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.
Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.
“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.
In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.
(bolded emphasis mine)
I have reprinted the entire article above, a rarity for me, because the URL to Drudge seems to be one that may change.
H/T to Chris in Middle Earth.
As I mentioned on February 5th, David Suzuki will be buying his way out of environmental Hell.
The foundation estimates the bus alone might produce about 20 tonnes of CO2. It is paying up to $35 per tonne to offset these emissions.
Whoop – Deee – Dooo.
They are compensating for the CO2 emissions to the tune of $23 a day. But in the meantime, their diesel bus will have driven over 3000 km spewing NOx, CO (carbon MONOXIDE, the POISONOUS gas), and particulate matter (soot). But that’s ok. They could have found a biodiesel bus. They could have found an hydrogen fuel cell bus. They could have gone by train.
Nope. Not good enough for Suzuki. Only a Rock Star style tour bus would do. So when our current government is working on removing chemicals and particulates from the air and fighting smog, the environmentalists continue to fight against the gas that gives plants life. I guess eating veggies is déclassé.
POI – On the last three trips I have made to Toronto, I have ended up with a sore throat which cleared a couple of days after I returned to Ottawa. My guess is that it was not me being sick, but that it was the chemicals in Toronto’s air. I have another trip scheduled to visit the big smoke and I will let you know whether the smog is the culprit.
In the mean time, I will let Suzuki keep OfficiallyScrewing the environment by buying carbon credits from some company in Switzerland.
The headline reads…
Big-city mayors seek common solutions
The the article goes on to say…
Mayors from 22 big cities across Canada met Friday at the Chateau Laurier Hotel to discuss how best to handle the problems facing Canadian cities.
Now for those of you living in the 21 big cities that are NOT Ottawa, you may not pick this out, but for those of us who live in Ottawa, noticing that they want a “common” solution while staying at the ritziest hotel in Ottawa seems a bit odd.
Just to give you an idea, the Chateau Laurier is a minimum of $189/night and for an Executive Suite we are talking over $500/night. Don’t bother asking about the Presidential Suite. Even a politician wouldn’t have the balls to book that one.
We in Ottawa are also lucky enough to not have to pay the travel expense and I would guess that our Mayor Larry O’Brien probably woke up in his own bed the day of the meeting and probably went back home to his own bed after the meeting.
I hope one of the problems that they discussed was the overspending on travel by city politicians.