You either pay attention or pay through the nose. I would rather pay attention.
Joe Canadian pays taxes to government’
Government hires and pays Public Servants.
Public Servants pay union dues to PSAC, the public servants union.
PSAC pays for advertising against Steven Harper and the Conservatives, making their advertising partisan. (I heard ads running on CFRA radio here in Ottawa this week.)
i.e. PSAC is laundering money from Joe Canadian to partisan politics.
Another way, we as taxpayers, get Officially Screwed.
Saturday March 26th, 2011 I was asked to deadhead to Quebec City on a 130 pmish charter to drive an empty truck back to Ottawa to save the Conservative Party some campaign expense. (Little did I know it was on the Conservative Party campaign jet as it flew its’s first leg of the long campaign tour.) After getting on what must have been the safest airplane in the nation and sitting in my seat, the Prime Minister came on board. I then had the privilege of seeing the Quebec City rally where I got to speak to Senator/Minister Marjory LeBreton for a good hour or so.
Then last Saturday afternoon as I was working in the campaign office of the Honourable Gordon O’Connor, the phone call came in. The party was looking for some athletic youth for a photo op at Greco Lean and Fit on Sunday morning (April 3rd, 2011) in the north side of Kanata which is in our riding. So I voluntold my kids (who were actually keen on the idea) and Saturday by 9am I was in a room full of press and supporters as my kids worked out in the background. Senator Jacques Demers gave a rousing introduction of all the local MPs and then proceeded to introduce the Prime Minister and his wife. I think the best moment for me was watching from afar as the Harpers spoke to my kids.
Which brings us to Saturday April 9th. My daughter Cookie, as many of you know, plays volleyball with the Ottawa Fusion 15u Girls competitive team. The provincials this year are being held in Waterloo again at RIM Park. The girls did fine yesterday winning their pool which put them into the top 16 in the province for today’s seeding round. We arrived early and got to spend some time watching the 15U boys play as they played in the gaps between the girls games. So as the day goes on, we notice the number of RCMP security in the building creeping upwards finally culminating in the PM arriving to watch his son play in the provincials. (and may I add, the Boys 15U team from Ottawa has a great team likely to medal this year).
So there you have it. Three Weekends…three different cities…and the Prime Minister is there each time. I told you that he was stalking me.
Seriously. I consider myself pretty fortunate to have the opportunity to have met him once, let alone the few times that I have gotten to meet him. I am proud to say I am a supporter of him and the Conservative Party of Canada and I am glad to put in volunteer hours above and beyond what many consider normal. I am of firm belief that the party is on the right track and guiding our government properly with minimal problems.
When your Lib, NDP, Green or Bloc friends say something about Harper signing up for a coalition in 2004, you can call them a bald faced liar and point them to this blog post.
Watch the video.
H/T to Dr. Roy’s Facebook.
In 2008 we had the election about nothing which was dubbed the Seinfeld election.
I am officially dubbing this election “The Red-Headed Step Election” as it is the election nobody wants.
That’s it, that’s all.
h/t my friend Ken in Stittsville
Tonight I had the privilege of attending the Free Thinking Film Society‘s event “Caledonia: No More Nightmares” at the Library and Archives Canada. I knew it was going to be interesting when, for the first time, the FTFS had protesters. There were perhaps a dozen or so people standing in front of the doors handing out flyers.
I was being handed one but asked what it was first. The gentleman said it was some information about Gary McHale and his videos and how they are racist. I told him that this had nothing to do with racism, but equality of justice and walked inside without taking his literature.
Inside I paid for my ticket, bought my autographed copy of Christie Blatchford’s book “Helpless: Caledonia’s Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us.” , a can of diet coke and went in and sat down in a seat.
The speeches and slideshow/videos started and as Mark Vanderhaas was speaking, two of the protesters who were in the theatre started heckling and commenting out loud about what was being said. They were shouted down by most of the audience with yells of “questions at the end” or “be quiet and you might learn something”.
After the third or fourth incident, Fred Litwin the host of the event warned them that if they disturbed the presentation again that they would be removed. And sure enough, when the subject of Dudley George came up, they could not keep silent and started the troublemaking again. Within a minute, Fred showed up with perhaps 4 to 6 officers who promptly escorted the two gentlemen out.
The biggest round of applause came when Mark Vanderhaas pointed to the police and said “Ladies and Gentleman, THAT is what a real police force looks like.”
For those of you who are not aware or who have not paid attention, Caledonia is the town where native Indians basically took over a suburban housing development as it was being built and despite calls for help from the OPP, the residents and owners of the land received no help. Property values plummeted, road barricades made people drive enormous miles out of their way to get to school, work etc. And when the locals tried to go put a Canadian flag up in the neighbourhood, they got arrested.
Indians squat, beat up residents, (one into a brain damaged coma), drive over police officers, drag citizens form their cars, disrupt so much…no arrests. Residents try to raise a Canadian flag ….arrested.
To me this was the primary question during the Ontario Provincial leadership campaign and still is. Why is there two tier justice in Canada? We are nation where we are all supposed to be treated equal. Where it doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow, brown, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, Jew, man, woman or tranny. The law needs to treat us all the same so that we know what to expect and as part of the process of keeping our society civil.
As Christie Blatchford’s title states, at Caledonia the OPP did not just fail the residents of Caledonia. They failed us all.
ADDENDUM: After the presentations, I had a chance to get Gary McHale and the Mayor of Haldimand County, Marie Trainer to autograph the book. I’d call it a little slice of history.
After all the battling over the dispensing of crack pipe kits to drug users, the Provincial government of Ontario has bypassed the Ottawa City Council by expanding the decision making process to include appointees.
The new system will have 6 councillors and 5 appointees meaning a single city councillor can side with the 5 appointees on any issue and bring crack pipe kits or safe injection clinics to a neighbourhood near you.
Ottawa taxpayers…OfficiallyScrewed again.
As many of you know, all politics and no sports makes Steve a dull boy. So as I do every year, I will be running an NCAA men’s basketball March Madness bracket challenge.
I usually get about 7 entrants so in an effort to do better I am opening this pool up to the public. Feel free to click the link below to join the pool. Note it is run completely online via Yahoo Fantasy sports and is strictly for fun and bragging rights.
I will try to make it a bit interesting by saying if we get 50 entrants, I will order the winner an OfficiallyScrewed.com baseball hat and if we hit 100 entrants I will give first place an OfficiallyScrewed.com T-Shirt and the second place entrant an OfficiallyScrewed.com baseball hat. NOTE: to collect a prize you must provide your email address so I can confirm who you are afterwards.
I know, I know, big spender!!! We ARE in a recession so cut me some slack. 🙂
To join, simply click the link below and go deal with the Yahoo application process if you are not already signed up as a Yahoo user.
http://tinyurl.com/OS-NCAA-Pool
Feel free to invite any friends or family you have.
Important Dates: Sunday March 13th at 5 or 6pm – Brackets are set live on CBS.
Thursday March 17th – noon – First tip off. Your brackets MUST be completely selected through to the championship BEFORE the first game tips off. This is important. DO NOT SIMPLY SELECT THE FIRST ROUND.
Use the comments to ask questions and good luck.
All I can say to my friends in California is a quote from the movie “The Fly” starring Jeff Goldblum.
“Be afraid…be very afraid.”
Kramer, who came under fire at eHealth for runaway spending by consultants and her $317,000 severance package, is executive director of a team bringing electronic health records to the UCLA Health System’s patients in four hospitals and clinics with 2,000 doctors. She is working as a consultant, and is not on staff.
Kramer is part of what the University of California at Los Angeles billed as “an exceptional team of experts” in an online publication Monday.
…
When Kramer left eHealth as chief executive in the spring of 2008, her golden parachute fuelled outrage from opposition parties and the public.
It was later revealed Kramer gave a speech that cost $25,000 to write and that eHealth gave out $16 million in contracts without competitive bidding in efforts to get electronic health records in place as quickly as possible.
Californian Tax Payers might just be … OfficiallyScrewed.
h/t to Shirley for this one.
I seem to have become the go to tech support guy for all my friends who own Blackberries. So in an effort to make life easier, I have listed below a bunch of tips that should help make your experience a bit better.
Reboot
When at homescreen press ALT + CAP + DEL at same time and release
Switching between apps.
Hold Alt and press escape button to right of touchpad/scroll ball. Keep Alt pressed while you scroll through apps. Let go of alt and you will open switch the app.
Press alt plus escape and release to go back to original app.
On newer models you can simply hold down the Menu button (to left of touchpad) until it appears and then scroll to new app and click touchpad
Dial by Name
To dial alphanumeric phone numbers like “1-888-Rogers1″ hold alt while you dial the letter portion and press call. Note this works for dial by name when you call a company directory.
Ring/tone settings.
To toggle between the current setting and the last used setting simply press and hold # (pound sign)
(If you’re in Vibrate and you used Quiet last, then this will switch you to Quiet and/or back again)
Free Flashlight
To turn your bb into a flashlight, open your video camera, go to options and change video light setting to “on”. Then whenever you open your video camera your led light will turn on giving you light. If you want it one click away you can program one of your side convenience buttons to open your video camera. if your BB does not have a video camera you can upgrade your OS and desktop manager to get the latest version which has the video camera. (may not be possible on older blackberrys with less memory or those blackberries without a camera flash)
Tech Info
Alt + Cap + H opens an info screen with any info a bb support or IT support guy would need from you.
Special Characters
To type accented or special characters simply Hold the letter key and scroll with your track pad.
Caps Lock
Press ALT + right CAP to activate caps lock (you’ll see an “aA” icon in the top right of the screen). Press it again to release caps lock.
NUM Lock
Press ALT + left CAP to activate NUM lock (you’ll see a “123” icon in the top right). Press again to release.
To easily manage multiple email signatures.
1. Delete your existing auto signature or change the option setting to No. (Open email. Click Menu -> Options -> Email Settings -> Use Auto Signature and then update your setting.)
2. Make an autotext (Options -> AutoText) entry where:
When you type: zz (or any irregular, non-standard 2 letter combo like zx) Replace it with:
Your Name
Your Company
Your phone, extension, etc.
You can have a “professional” signature and a “casual” sign off. Or many signatures. Now just enter those 2 extra letters at the end of a message and your signature will appear there.
Email Tips
Press T – to get to the top of an email, inbox, web page or document (ER key on a BlackBerry® Pearl™)
Press B – to get to the bottom of an email, inbox, web page or document (CV key on a Pearl)
Press SPACE – to move down one screen at a time (M key on a Pearl)
Press ALT + SPACE – to move up one screen at a time (UI key on a Pearl)
Press N – to move to next email item (JK key on a Pearl)
Press P – to move to the previous email item (DF key on a Pearl)
Press U – to move to the most recent unread email [from within email]
Press SPACE twice to insert a period when typing.
Hold a letter to capitalize it (without using the CAP key)
For you ultimate geeks
The BlackBerry captures and saves an ongoing event log file. If you’re experiencing slower performance on your BB and want to clear the Log, or you’re a developer who needs to see what’s happening at a deeper level…
Press ALT + LGLG (hold the ALT key and type the letters LGLG) The log file screen will appear. Press Menu to see options like “Clear Log” or “Copy Day’s Contents”.
Note: you must be in the home screen to get the log file!
If you prefer more than the simplified wireless coverage “bars”, you can switch to an exact decibel meter view.
Press ALT + NMLL (type the letters NMLL) This toggles between wireless signal as “bars” and showing the negative number decibel value (very techie!) Note: you must be in the home screen to toggle coverage meter.
If you’re a web developer, and you visit a site while on your BlackBerry, you can still view source code. While you’re on the browser page, Press ALT + RBVS (type the letters RBVS).
Credit for many for many of these needs to be given to http://www.asendu.com/node/13
Just like the new rules for credit cards, each electricity bill should tell us when our last payment will be on the debt.
I say this because originally we were supposed to have paid off the stranded debt by 2012. Then it got extended to 2014. Then it got pushed to 2018. And now this from the National Post.
Why is OEFC financing this capital project when OPG supposedly has the ability to raise funds from private sources and the “stranded debt” was placed in OFEC to ensure that OPG would be self-financing in the future? Why is the “debt retirement” money being paid by ratepayers into OEFC now being used to provide new financing to OPG? The historical rate of repayment of the old “stranded debt” indicates it will take another 49 years to retire! Why hasn’t the Auditor General raised some alarms on this? Why doesn’t OEFC publish quarterly reports so the public can properly follow its activities?
So should our bills not say “At current payment rates, you will make your last payment on February 29th, 2060?
If this 49 year extension is accurate, then it is safe to say that this debt has been severely mismanaged by the OEFC. The OEFC was created to hold the old debt and pay it off. And now it is being used as a bank which is funding new projects. This is clearly not good for your electricity bill because what few people pay attention to is the fact that you pay HST on top of that debt retirement charge.
If the infrastructure money for new electricity projects was simply to come from the government and not the OEFC, then you would not have to pay that charge and the HST on it directly. It would simply be rolled in to the provincial deficit/debt. But by shuffling it into the OEFC, McGuinty get’s a nice HST boost and you and get…. you guessed it…
OfficiallyScrewed!!