You Won't Find A Better Example Of Social IN-ACTIVISM

Walkom: Vague yes. But don’t discount Wall St. protests

2011/10/05 20:40:30

It’s easy to dismiss the protest Occupy Wall Street and its planned spin-off Occupy Toronto as ditzy. Don’t. (54)

You Know Spring Has Actually Arrived...

...when columnists take on the problem of panhandling. Panhandling has become a cottage insustry, thx to Comrade Miller and His cabal, and it is NOT only a downtown problem but there is nowhere in the city where you are not exposed although I don't notice anyone begging on the streets of the Old Post area.

Buddy can you spare a crime 137

Tighter restrictions needed on Toronto panhandlers

By Sue-Ann Levy ,Toronto Sun

Q & A: Doug Holyday on Toronto's panhandlers


It is time to crack down on panhandlers in Toronto? Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday believes it may be. He tells the Post’s Natalie Alcoba why

THE WINNER...

and THE LOSERS!

City Hall's clearly defined battle lines


By SUE-ANN LEVY, City Hall Columnist

They came in droves Wednesday evening.
There were the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) tenants like Susan Gapka and Pat McEndry whose only job seems to be hanging around City Hall and making deputations.

I noted leftist consultants like Sean Meagher, president of Public Interest Strategy and Communications and Katrina Miller, who has just joined Meagher’s firm after shilling for the Toronto Environmental Alliance.

I spotted CUPE 416 president Mark Ferguson and his counterpart, CUPE 79 head Ann Dembinski as well as John Campey, executive director of Social Planning Toronto.

When I left the chambers to file this column, I saw former Federation of Metro Tenants Association (FMTA) executive director and now paralegal, Dan McIntyre out of the corner of my eye.

The Council Chamber was packed with the gravy train-enabling, public teat-sucking, union-loving crowd fighting for life as they knew it Before (Rob) Ford.

This is war, ladies and gentlemen.

Today, new Mayor Rob Ford has the audacity to remove the entire board of directors of the TCHC for sitting on their thumbs as millions of dollars were gambled on the stock market, spent on obscene visits to spas, Muskoka resorts and pricey restaurants and thrown into sole-source contracts with suppliers in China.

My goodness, shame on the new regime for wanting that money to go directly towards improving the quality of life for tenants living in bed bug-filled, decrepit, flooded units.

The people in the crowd have themselves convinced that some day soon Canada’s largest housing authority will be privatized, once CEO Keiko Nakamura is shown the door.

Not that the TCHC will be privatized.

And before the trees are in full bloom, the new regime will take the necessary steps towards contracting out half of the city’s garbage pickup.
Horror of horrors.

This is war.

Mark my words.

Last night’s show from various leftist hangers-on and despicable leftist hypocrites on council — like Adam Vaughan, Pam McConnell, Paula Fletcher, Joe Mihevc, Gord Perks and newbies Kristyn Wong-Tam, Sarah Doucette and Mary Fragedakis — had nothing to do with the fate of the tenants living in TCHC buildings.

It was about battling the kinds of changes at City Hall that will lessen their power, influence and shall we say, the good times they’ve enjoyed for the past seven years.

Yep, the party’s over and they know it.

For if they really cared about tenants, they wouldn’t have spent nearly two days blowing hot air and wringing their hands about whether due process had been followed and whether the audit report should have been debated first before council decided to remove the board.

For goodness sake, if they were so concerned, I don’t recall one of them — not Vaughan, McConnell, Fletcher, Mihevc, Perks or the three newbies — attending last Thursday’s TCHC board meeting.

They could have heard it all directly from Auditor-General Jeff Griffiths.

Did any of them actually read Griffths’ report? It’s been available for 10 days now.

Wong-Tam — who put forward a so-called “compromise” motion to keep the four people still on the board along with a new managing director — claimed she was “concerned,” about the future of TCHC and its tenants.

What a bunch of crap.

Mihevc, rushing to support her “elegant” motion as he called it, chimed in with his own thoughts about Ford engaging in an “abuse of process” for having the nerve to be decisive and wanting to clean house.

Perks insisted that public confidence won’t be restored if Ford and Co. “throw out the rules in a crisis.”

Well, I’ve got news for all of them.

They don’t care one bit about tenants and they don’t care about transparency.

They’re out of touch with public sentiment, too. A just released Ipsos Reid poll has put Ford’s approval rating at 72%.

Some 71% of Torontonians surveyed said the new mayor has the right priorities in mind.

It could have been a slam dunk.

But the leftists care only about hanging on to the gravy train.

The battle lines have been drawn, folks.

Fasten your seatbelts. We’re in for a bumpy ride.

The Problem Is Bigger Than The Board...

...it needs a change in philosphy. Long wait times, poor maintenance response, lifetime occupancy, etc. etc.

Housing board finally did right thing

By SUE-ANN LEVY, City Hall Columnist

I can guarantee you they’d never seen it before. Looking like a pack of deer caught in the headlights, the seven now deposed

Beyond the crisis: Fresh ideas on public housing


Fri Mar 4 2011

When it comes to the future of social housing in Toronto, there’s more to talk about than scandal and privatization. (2)

Black History Month

N-word wickedness Do kids of other minorities have to accept insults in the name of free speech?

By George Elliott Clarke

An English Prof in the “New South,” shy about uttering the N-word even in university, sought a remedy – and now a U.S. publisher will shortly release a new edition of the 1884 American classic Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), in which the word “slave” replaces “nigger” 219 times.

More...

...NO but if you really want to learn about history they will have to accept the facts something current day messiaha are oppossed to as it threatens funding of their cottage industry, Racial Harmony.

The N- word challenge


Local celebs weigh in

The Commonality Of Rallies...

...has little to do with the cause but rather that many people have too much time on their hands and the most important factor in the success/failure of the rally is that the weather is not too harsh.

Jonathan Kay: Beck versus Stewart, anger versus irony


Jonathan Kay

We’ve heard a lot about Tea Party fury in the lead-up to the mid-term elections. Over the weekend, I spent time with another, equally fed up voting bloc. But these people aren’t angry. They’re just … bemused.

The event was Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” a comedy and music jamboree on the Washington Mall. It was billed as non-partisan — with Jon Stewart playing the role of “sane” centrist jousting with faux-blowhard, faux-fearmongering Stephen Colbert. But when I spoke to people in the crowd, it became clear that this was a solidly left-wing event. Not so much pro-Democrat — these folks are too jaded for party politics — as anti-Tea Party.

The Rally attracted more than 200,000 participants — three times what Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin got when they played the same venue to much Godly, right-wing fanfare a month ago. All those bodies would seem to translate into a mass political movement. But appearances can be deceiving: Most of the people I saw on The Mall aren’t engaged in politics as most of us would define it. It’s more like cultural commentary.

Like Tea Partiers, the Jon Stewart brigade has a narrative about a country that has been hijacked by extremists. For the Tea Partiers, those extremists are Barack Obama and his big-spending “socialist” allies in Congress. For the Stewart-ites, the hijackers are the Tea Partiers themselves, along with the enabling hard-right media culture spawned by FOX News.

As political movements, what motivates the Tea Partiers is anger and outrage, while the Stewart-ites must rely on irony and an abundance of wryness. Read More »

The Problem...

...is that once the race does start the number of people lining the course is dismal and those that do take part have their own agenda; ie: social in-activists, unions, evironuts, etc. and many are voting against someone rather than for someone.

Porter: Mayoral race? What mayoral race?

by Catherine Porter

Poll Speaks Volumes About The Fear Among Special Interest Groups...

...that their spot at the trough will disappear.

Miller Tops Voter Support: Poll
  
'Liberal' T.O. finally is PO'd

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, QMI Agency

Anyone across Canada who considers Toronto a liberal (and Liberal) la-la land filled with sheep-like residents meekly accepting every new tax imposed on them, hasn’t been paying attention to its race for mayor.

Poll Shows Impressions of Rob Ford Change

Grassroots endorsement for Ford 

By DON PEAT, Toronto Sun

Talk about return to sender.

Last place. That's got to sting

Kelly Grant

Mayor's race reduced to mudslinging: Mammoliti

By DON PEAT, Toronto Sun

Hey mayoral candidates, where’s the beef?

 

A Much Need Program HIGHJACKED...

...by John Clarke, OCRAP and social in-activists who counseled many that did not qualify to apply and for their short term gains those who need the program will probably suffer.

Don’t slash food assistance

August 22, 2010

In March, the province announced that it intended to replace a food supplement program for eligible welfare recipients because it was “not sustainable” and “not achieving the intended results.” Now, Ontario’s most needy are waiting to see what the new program will look like when it is introduced as early as next month.
But the government has yet to reach out with any formal consultations among advocacy groups — let alone with the poor who will be directly affected. That has fed fears that Queen’s Park is not interested in producing a better program, just a cheaper one.
Such a move would hurt some of Ontario’s most vulnerable — those who suffer the twin scourges of poverty and illness — without even succeeding in saving any money.
Ontario’s special diet allowance currently provides $10 to $250 a month to some 165,000 welfare and disability support recipients, enabling them to buy specialized foods to better manage medical conditions, such as multiple sclerosis and diabetes. Restricting their access to those extra funds by tightening the rules will only make them poorer and, consequently, sicker. All that does is transfer the costs, plus additional ones, from the welfare budget to the health-care budget.
Surely the government recognizes it is better to improve someone’s ability to manage their illness through proper diet than it is to sit back and wait for them to arrive in a hospital emergency room.
It is understandable that a government already running a substantial deficit would have concerns about a program whose costs have risen dramatically — from $6 million to $221 million since 2003.
But the underlying problem is not the design of program itself or the alleged fraud suggested by the provincial auditor last fall in a report the government seized on. It is need.
At $585 a month for a single person, the current welfare rate is clearly inadequate to keep a roof overhead and buy food — let alone nutritious food.
For it to do any good to anyone — including taxpayers — the new program must meet the needs of those it purports to serve: welfare and disability support recipients with medical conditions. It is difficult to see how that can be achieved without, the two ministers involved — health and social services — talking to them.

Canada Was Represented And Made Our Position Clear...

Chris Selley: Did Stephen Harper “snub” the AIDS conference?

Chris Selley  July 26, 2010 – 1:30 pm

From The Globe and Mail‘s Ottawa Notebook blog:

When critics jumped on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to stay away from a major international AIDS conference that draws heads of state, his office pointed out that Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq attended as the representative of the Canadian government.
But Ms. Aglukkaq’s performance did little to impress some of the doctors and scientists at the gathering. …
Ms. Aglukkaq was the target of additional criticism after she told Canadian delegates she would not sign the Vienna Declaration — a scientific statement that argues the criminalization of drug use is fuelling the HIV/AIDS epidemic — because it clashes with Canada’s National Anti-Drug Strategy, which is designed to prevent people from using illicit drugs in the first place.

From Peter McKnight in the Vancouver Sun:

This week the feds once again displayed their hostility to evidence-based health policy when they refused to support the Vienna Declaration. …

From a Toronto Star editorial:

While world-ranking advocates and scientists like Stephen Lewis and Dr. Julio Montaner will be among those attending the international AIDS conference that opens today in Vienna, the Harper government will have a much lower profile.

From Janice Kennedy in the Ottawa Citizen:

Perspectives from the far right are their political life-force, guiding their decisions, dictating their initiatives.
So it is imperative to appear tough on the problem of crime, characterized as growing. …
It is imperative to maintain other appearances, too — to have Harper, for instance, decline an invitation to the current International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

Now, I know next to nothing about AIDS, and I’d sign the Vienna Declaration in a heartbeat if my signature meant anything. But from a straight reporting standpoint, two salient facts seem curiously missing from all this: How many other countries have signed the Vienna Declaration? And how many other world leaders attended the AIDS conference that wrapped up on the weekend?

Read More »

Media caught singling out Harper for “snubbing” AIDS conference

 

The National Post’s Chris Selley nails some journalists and an editorial staff for running articles that insinuated PM Stephen Harper was somehow remiss as Canada’s leader to not attend and sign the Vienna Declaration. Turns out not one of the other G20 heads of state attended nor signed on for good reason either but this [...]

BC Blue |

We Have Elected And Supported Leftwing Social Engineers...

...and Social In-Activists to the point that Harper has taken the party to the left in order to pacify the cradle to grave proponents who nutured themselves at the beats of PET.

David Harris: Canada feeds the haters

Tim Fraser/National Post

Protesters protest police action at their last protest.

National Post  July 8, 2010 – 8:48 am

 

Businesses damaged. Cars aflame. It’s been two weeks and we’ve yet to take responsibility for Toronto’s G20 rioting. We should, because we laid the groundwork for it.
For years, our neglect, denial and self-censorship have prepared the conditions for this kind of mess. We citizens have elected, appointed and rewarded those who have all but telegraphed the message that it is open season on public order, peace and stability.

Read More »

Posted in: Canada, Full Comment, Policy, Social Issues, World Politics  Tags: human rights, G20 summit, police, David Harris, extremism

Not Much Has Changed Since The Protests Of The 60s...

...if you wanted to get laid you bought a tie dye shirt and sandals and marched.

G20 protesters to stage 'kiss-in' in Toronto for gay and disabled rights

TORONTO - G20 protesters will be back on the streets of Toronto this afternoon to rally for gay and disabled people's rights. 22 June

 

Giving The Left Equal Time...

Letters to the Editor

Mother Knows Best...

Terror Suspect’s Mom Says Son is ‘Not Guilty By Reason of Stupidity’ — She’s Partly Correct

June 13, 2010 09:54 AM by Doug Powers
42 Comments | 1 Trackback

 

Is It Any Wonder Jane And Johnny Would Spend Their Time Marching And Protesting

Mount Allison breaks into the big league of loopy professors

Posted: May 17, 2010, 10:01 AM by NP Editor

Kelly McParland, Heather Reisman, Mount Allison University

 

The poor profs at Mount Allison University must have felt they were being left out of the fast lane on academic humiliation.
Mount Allison is a small university, with a tiny student body, out there in Sackville New Brunswick, which even Prince Edward Island considers out of the way.
Bigger universities were getting all the attention with silly campaigns fired by perverse notions of justice and rights. The University of Ottawa hitched itself to a campaign to prevent a right-wing author from being allowed to speak there, the banning of authors being a well-known means of protecting the right to free speech. And a collection of cuckoos at the University of Regina announced their horror that the university would show sympathy and support for students left without a father or mother because they'd given their lives in the military.

Leftists, Liberals And Social In-Activists Trying To...

...feather their own nests and justify their cottage industries.

Tasha Kheiriddin: Pride parade rides the outrage express

Of course the real issue should be why the government funds all these interest groups and festivals in the first place

• Ottawa won't renew funding for pride parade
  
• Court to rule if refusal to conduct gay marriages violates Charter
  

Jonathan Kay: Saving women's lives without abortion

Get off your Ass And Vote

What will it take to get you to vote?

Toronto City Hall. (Tom Podolec / CTV

Sandie Benitah, ctvtoronto.ca

TORONTO — There's nothing sexy about municipal politics.
Bylaws aren't sexy, and neither is the issue of snow removal or parking tickets. Not even a sex scandal could make the TTC sexy and frankly even Toronto's mayoral race is looking like it will be a snoozer.
Heck, we're not even surprised anymore when the stats come out at the end of each municipal election that highlight our dismal voting record. In 2006, less than 40 per cent of Torontonians even bothered to get out and cast a ballot.
So what will it take to get the masses interested in the one level of government that actually has the most impact on their daily lives?

(Click here to see how the city actually affects your day-to-day life)

Go to Part 2

Voluntering Is Very Noble BUT...

...past experience has shown that without giving this group a modicum of power to correct problems it is like a social service volunteer recognizing a person is hungry but not being able to give them a sandwich.

The farce is we picked the wrong target at the TTC: 

By ROB GRANATSTEIN, Toronto Sun

In my view, the rocket we launched at the TTC on Thursday’s front page (“TTC Farce: Customer service guru babysat by transit flaks, drives convertible to work”), which continued inside the paper, was misguided and bombed the wrong target.

Ontario commits to Toronto's Transit City - in 10 years, rather than 8

Aother Of Comrade Miller's Legacies...

Base bike lanes on the facts: Editorial

City Council is certainly within its rights to put two bike lanes on University Ave. this summer as an experiment, as long as it remembers a few key points.
First, that this must be a genuine trial run to determine whether the idea is viable and not simply a sneaky way of imposing a permanent decision.
Second, that the final decision on this proposal properly rests with the next council — the one elected after Oct. 25.
Third, that the “Stakeholder Advisory Group” the city will consult within evaluating the project must include motorists.
Fourth, council needs to remember that what may work for 12 weeks in the summer from July to September could prove to be a disaster in the dead of winter.
There’s a lot at stake here. University Ave. is a major north-south arterial road, vital to moving traffic in and out of the downtown core.
Closing down two of its lanes and physically separating bike riders from motorists with poles and lane markings may indeed make the street safer for bicyclists. But what’s the point if it turns University Ave. into a demolition derby for motorists?
As mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi notes, there are already bike lanes just three blocks west of University on Beverley-St. George. Similarly, the city’s plan to put bike lanes on Jarvis St. ignores the fact there are already bike lanes just two blocks east on Sherbourne St.
Such examples raise the question of whether the current council’s real interest is in establishing a workable system of bike lanes across the city — a valid idea — or in making a grand political statement that bike lanes are good and then imposing them on the public, regardless of the facts.
Coun. Glenn De Baeremaeker, council’s leading bike booster and chair of the Public Works And Infrastructure Committee, has already predicted the University Ave. proposal will be “a great success.”
Rossi condemns it as “madness” which will lead to “total gridlock” in the downtown core.
They both can’t be right, but the way to determine who’s wrong isn’t to accept either view on blind faith.
It’s to honestly evaluate how the University Ave. experiment works this summer, and move forward from there.

Congrats To Those Who Voted For Comrade Miller...

...because he made promises based on his perceived relationships at Queens Park, McGoonty, and Ottawa, Martin. But let's give him credit for his stopping a bridge to the Billy Bishop Airport. BTW at least four or five of the major 'transit" projects are proceeding.

James: Transit betrayal calls for response

Transit City may not be beloved, but it's better than the alternative the province handed out Thursday.