The Pencil Commies Get Bitchslapped In BC – Is Ontario Next?

Mulder

I took a bit of a beating from the moonbats on my view of forced pencil sharing in public schools, but thanks to Sara from Choice For Childcare, the story about the lawsuit in BC forcing schools to pay for all items related to the curriculum and graduation of students has been resurrected in the Toronto Star today.

The ruling is a welcome one. And while applicable only in B.C., it should serve as a strong reminder to schools, boards and education ministry officials in Ontario that fees have no place in public education.

Officially, Ontario schools cannot charge fees for anything, including basic supplies, that is required for courses under the provincial curriculum.

But after years of budget cuts, many schools appear to be quietly and unofficially skirting the rules. A 2005 study by People for Education, a parent advocacy group, suggested nearly 75 per cent of Ontario’s high schools levied lab and material fees. According to the group, those charges ranged from $5 to $100 and included science supplies, musical instruments, woodworking materials, photocopying and workbooks.

…

To rectify the situation, Queen’s Park should remind school administrators that fees are not allowed for basic courses or class materials. At the same time, it should ban the practice of levying student activity fees and give schools the funds they need to offer full programs for all without cost.

Wow!! It looks to me like schools in Ontario should provide that box of pencils, not to mention art supplies, that compass for math, and even musical instruments. Considering we rent T-bone’s trombone annually, I am starting to wonder just how much money we are paying directly for our children’s education for items that the school should be providing.

I wonder if Afghani children pay for their pencils?

Follow The Bouncing Moonbat Ball

Mulder

Follow along now…

1) Canada’s Liberal Government gave China $50 Million a year in humanitarian aid.
2) China in turn has been providing food and aid to starving North Koreans
3) Kim Jong Poofyhead has been starving his people to live a lavish life and develop nuclear weapons
4) North Korea has claimed to have detonated a nuclear bomb
5) Nuclear bombs generate massive amounts of heat and radiation which is brutal for the environment

Yet….

Every moonbat leftwing nutbar website is criticizing the Tory Clean Air Act and not the North Koreans. If the DPRK is even mentioned it’s to shift the blame somewhere else or to condone the detonation.

Tonight on The Hour, even George Strombolopolous threw out a joke that blamed the CBC for the North Korean nukes. Way to turn a global event into a cute self deprecating joke George. < sarcasm>Nice job.< / sarcasm>

Go figure. I guess to get a lefty to complain about a nuclear bomb going off, it would need to be detonated by George Bush. Although if that happened, you would see thousands of the environmentalistas picketing the US Embassy.

I Think I Hit A Nerve With The Pencil Commentary

Mulder

I think I must have hit a nerve at Kinchblog and where’d that bug go blogs with my forced pencil sharing commentary. At least jeff at bug agrees with me that school items that are needed for the curriculum should be funded by tax payers.

As I commented on jeff’s blog:

Thanks for agreeing with SOME of my post. I want to clarify that I am all for our education system buying everything until 9th grade. That’s the way it was when I was in school, and I think it should continue.

I don’t like the fact that teachers FORCE the kids to do it. As I mentioned, my daughter does know well enough to share when it’s needed. But it isn’t the teachers place to force it. Sharing comes from the heart, not from a whip.

But thanks for trying to paint me as a tyrant. I’ll remember that (and laugh) when I give to the food bank or donate to the Canadian Cancer Society, or walk door to door with my daughter to raise money for gymnastics equipment for children who can’t afford it as I do yearly.

Did I mention sharing comes from the heart and not from a whip?

I have no clue what changed, but I do know that everything was paid for until I started 9th grade. At that point I remember going with my friends to Grand And Toy and getting our school supplies, binders, paper, etc. It was a big day getting out there on my own to buy supplies. Text books were still supplied by the school at that point and I didn’t have to buy a text until grade 13 (in Ontario) and again in all my post secondary endeavours.

Funny, that when I was in university I gave my old texts back to the school for less fortunate kids instead of selling them.

Ohh….did I mention that sharing comes from the heart and not from a whip??

Liberals Sent Big Bucks To Little China

Mulder

Rona AmbroseFrom Oral Questions on Tuesday October 3rd. Lucienne Robillard tried to slam the Tory environmental policy when Minister of the Environment, Rona Ambrose dropped these numbers.

Mr. Speaker, I know the Liberals would like to distract us from their record. Let us talk about that record on climate change and their priorities.

The Liberals gave $2 million to the State Power Corporation of China to buy foreign credits. Last week I told the House about the $4.5 million the Liberals gave to Kazakhstan. Yesterday I told the House about the $5 million to the Asian Development Bank. Today I am telling the House about the $2 million to the State Power Corporation of China, all to buy foreign credits.

That could have paid for anti-pollution technology and sewage treatment to protect the health of Canadians. That money should stay here at home.

(emphasis mine)

So not only were they paying OUR Kyoto credits, but we were paying for China’s Kyoto credits too. How nice of us.

Just another example of the Liberals Officially Screwing Canadians while the Tories continue to slam the door on corruption and waste.

Well done Minister Ambrose.

Is Forced Sharing Communism?

Mulder

Yesterday at the dinner table, my wife was talking to Cookie about pencils. Cookie, my 10 year old daughter, commented that they don’t have their own pencils at school.

This made me perk my ears up a bit to listen closer.

She then proceeded to explain that in her class they have a box where they all put their pencils at the beginning of the year and when you need a pencil, you can just go up and get one from the box.

I distinctly remember pencils being on the school supply list which we, as parents, were asked to supply our children with at the beginning of the year. Now I am all for the school offering up a solution which has every student put ONE pencil into a community box which they can “borrow” from for a day when they forget their own. But for the whole class to lump ALL of their pencils into one community pile which the children draw from is not sharing. It’s communism.

Am I being paranoid? A few years ago, I remember that the kids had “1 Box of Facial Tissues” on their school supply list and the teacher took them all on the first day and kept one box on her desk the whole year for kids who needed them. What happened to parents who either kept their sick kids home or sent them to school with a pocketfull of tissues when they were sick?

I distinctly remember things like pencils and tissues and art supplies being paid for by the school when I was a child. Now we are not only forced to send supplies with our kids, but the school is forcing the children to share. Cookie knows well enough to let a friend borrow a pencil if they forgot one, but this classroom communism is pushing my limits a bit.

Someone tell me I am wrong (with a valid argument please!!)

Travel Propaganda Leans Left

Mulder

Last Wednesday I took off for San Jose, California on a work excursion. While travelling I began to notice the trend that left leaning MSM propaganda is everywhere.

Over the last three years, I have probably been on about 40 different business trips and stayed in dozens of different hotels. While on all these trips I can conclude the following.

1) The TV station of choice for displaying in American airports is CNN.

and

2) The newspaper that inevitably sits on my hotel room doorstep each morning is USA Today.

This doesn’t usually irk me until I sat down for my 3 hour layover in Toronto, looked up and saw that the Greater Toronto Airport Authority has partnered up with CBC to propagandize our travellers.

Maybe the fact that I saw as many people on laptops as I did watching the TVs was a good sign of the way things are moving in the world.

If anyone out there knows what is on other Canadian airport monitors, please feel free to comment. Since most of my travel was to the US, I am not as familiar with other Canadian airports outside of the TV in the smoking lounge at the Ottawa airport which was flexible. (I would consistently change the station to CTV newsnet whenever I had a chance)

As an aside, on this trip I got to run into Tim Powers, the Conservative pundit who is on Mike Duffy Live a couple of times a week and on CFRA weekly. I took a few minutes to say hi and let him know I enjoyed watching him spar with the other party pundits.

All Good Videos Must Come To An End

Mulder

I just arrived home to find a note in my email box from YouTube telling me that the Dan Matheson vs. Dan McTeague video that I had on my YouTube channel (via CTV Newsnet) was removed due to a third party complaint regarding it infringing on copyright. The third party was Holland and Hart LLC, a law firm out of the western US states.

I have no clue why an American law firm would complain about a Canadian blogger/YouTube video post unless it is either a) a firm helping protect YouTube or b) a firm tied to some Canadian entity that must dislike my blog.

In light of this, I am encouraging you all to go to my YouTube channel and view any of my video posts now because I will be removing many of them over the long weekend. i.e. consider now to Sunday your Last Chance Viewing!!

When all is said and done, I will only have my Red Friday videos.

If any lawyers out there would care to defend me leaving these videos up there (for free) please email me. Otherwise, enjoy them while they last.

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Holland & Hart LLP claiming that this material is infringing:

Dan The Man Matheson Rocks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACi25M4o0mk

Movie Entertainment Magazine Goes Political

Mulder

In the October issue of Movie Entertainment, the magazine sent to pay TV subscribers, Gordon McCall gets all political about the Conservative plan to cut funding to the Canada Council for the Arts.

In true spirit of the Brothers Grimm, and in his apparent quest to make us all things American, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority government seems prepared to put an end to the Maple Leaf model of government funding for the performaing arts.

Maple Leaf model?? More like socialist model. Where do you get off with such preposterous rubbish? The American model is truly successful because a) they have big name talent b) they let the market dictate what is successful and what is not and c) they don’t suck money out of government programs to make dog movies.

These folks wonk around in their tuxedos on tax payer dollars like it was theirs to spend. Why don’t they take some pride in their work and put out a movie that is entertaining. Or even better, why not learn to market a movie that actually may have some legs instead of pumping out ridiculous junk with the millions in funding that the Liberals were going to give them?

Professional theatres are dependent on the small current government subsidy to, in some cases, simply stay afloat and, in others, to keep ticket prices in line with audience expectations.”

What the heck is that? $50 Million isn’t enough for you? Did you ever think that if ticket prices were at a level equal to the value of what the theatre was showing that the market would dictate whether or not the show should go on?? If enough flops start showing up then the person selecting plays or movies for that theatre doesn’t DESERVE to get paid. Like the real world, they should get fired. What gives you the right to keep asking for more money to keep opening more theatres so that more and more Canadians can be dependent on tax dollars for a living? Get stuffed.

You know Canada’s entertainment business would die without sucking money out of the public coffers. And why is that Mr. McCall? Is it because most of the movies made in Canada are crap that would never have seen the light of day were it not for the money you leech off of people with real jobs that are productive to society?

Why don’t you take a page out of the book of good solid comedic TV like Corner Gas. The advertisers pay more for that one because it is a solid winner. It deserves to make money and be successful because it’s good. Not because it’s supported by a socialist attitude.

So when you get on your political soapbox to get the average “sitting at home on the sofa” citizen to listen to you mangle the Prime Minister for saving our tax dollars, think about all the people who’s taxes paid for that tuxedo you sport at the film festivals and how most of them don’t even own a tux.

Office Of The Auditor General Fumbles The Ball With Enviromental Report

Mulder

I have often posted about the Kyoto Protocol and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions on my blog but never have I been as outraged and upset as I am this morning.

I have been reviewing the Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and I am shocked that the Office of the Auditor General would release such a report with it’s partial information.

Imagine you eating a pizza everyday. Imagine a report on weight loss providing the breakdown of content of ONE SINGLE slice of pepperoni. Imagine a report on weight loss providing information on what the caloric breakdown of pepperoni was. And then imagine that same report recommending how changing ONE SLICE of pepperoni could help you reduce weight without addressing the caloric aspects of cheese, crust, sausage, mushrooms, green peppers and maybe even anchovies.

Believe it or not, this is what the report does with respect to GHG emissions.

The report provides great information about

a) the breakdown of GHGs released by developed countries, and
b) the breakdown of where Canada’s man made GHGs are produced by sector.

But without correlating this to the total amount of GHGs in the atmosphere and what percentage our man made ones are of this total amount, the report is useless. Again the fact that simple water vapour makes up 99% of the earths GHGs is ignored.

This is simply gross negligence and for the OAG to ask Canadians to act on this is gross misconduct. I am just disgusted that the report ignores the fact that our nation produces less than 1/100th of 1% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

So when someone tells you the earth is warming because of man made GHG emissions, tell them to stick water vapour in their pipes and smoke it.

PM Harper Faces Down The Francophonie Nations And Wins

Mulder

The story below just blows me away with pride. Our Prime Minister has clearly shown Canada that he is a leader. Today he showed the world.

Members of the Francophonie summit have agreed to a compromise on a contentious resolution after Prime Minister Stephen Harper blocked the original proposal.

The original wording of the resolution recognized Lebanon’s suffering in this summer’s 34-day conflict, but not Israel’s.

Harper took a strong stance against the Egyptian-proposed resolution which most of the 72 members supported. He urged the organization to recognize the suffering of both nations.

After returning to the conference table to hammer out the wording of the resolution, the French-speaking states eventually agreed unanimously to support a compromise that called for the end of hostilities and a return to calm.

“They spent much of the afternoon at the conference table re-drafting a resolution with the wording Harper wanted,” said CTV’s Rosemary Thompson reporting from the summit.

H/T to PoliticalStaples