Archive for: March 2007

Well, it seems like yet another Grit has gotten fed up with the Fiberals and jumped ship.  The Grit in question is Ontario Liberal backbencher Tim Peterson (whose website seems to be currently offline).  Some of you might know him as being part of what the MSM like to call “London’s first family of Liberals.” :roll:  He’s former Ontario premier David Peterson and Toronto-area MP Jim Peterson’s kid brother and London-North-Centre MPP (and former Ontario Lieberal president) Deb Matthews’ brother-in-law.  Now there’s a gene pool for ya…

The Liebrals, predictably, are saying that he’s just pissy over not getting a cabinet post.  Because we all know that whenever someone crosses the floor from the Grits, its always because of a cabinet position or some other such ulterior crap; but when someone crosses to the Grits and gets plopped right into a cabinet position that they have no qualifications for, it’s truly altruism at its highest.

And before the hooting even starts: no, he’s not joining the Tories.  He’s going to sit as an independent until the October 10 provincial election when he does plan to run as a Tory (assuming he can secure the riding nomination — he’s not getting a freebie).  Ironically enough, it looks like PC Leader John Guess-What-Party-I’m-With actually talked him out of outright crossing over:

“John Tory convinced me that I should not work in this session against the party that helped me get elected, and the party that the people in Mississauga South supported in the last election,” he said.

Imagine a Grit doing that.  Go ahead, imagine it.  Nah, I can’t either.

Damn. It’s not very often that I trip over something that actually makes me sit down, shut the hell up and think. This is one of those things. This guy’s name is Evan Sayet, he’s described as a “writer, lecturer and pundit,” and this is… well, this is him ripping modern liberalism (big L and little l) a new asshole at a Heritage Foundation function. Not sure where or when this was but I find myslef wishing I could have been there; it looks like I would have enjoyed myself… 😉

I’m not going to go and repeat or even summarize, what all this guy got into, but trust me: this is well worth watching. The whole video is over 45 minutes 😯 so it might take some time to download, expecially on a slow connection like dialup. So, if you are one of those unlucky buggers still stuck in dialup land, my advice is click the vid, pause it as soon as it starts to play, and go grab a coffee or something. Come back when it’s finally downloaded and enjoy it then. Like I said, it’s worth it…

Quit your damn whining. You heard me. All you bozos out there that are moaning and groaning, like a bunch of homeless mill operators at a TO budget handout, about how the big bad lottery retailers cheated and got a bunch of cash from all you honest suckers. Yes, it seems that some of those guys and gals in those little kiosks in the mall managed to up and bugger off with someplace in the neighbourhood of at least — yes, at LEAST — a hundred million loonies in the last six or seven years, from ’99 to ’06…

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin’s report, A Game of Trust, revealed yesterday that the lottery corporation enjoyed a “buddy buddy” relationship with retailers and left no paper trail that can be followed to trace the winnings back to their rightful owners.

“Unscrupulous” lottery-ticket retailers have collected at least $100 million in fraudulent claims since 1999, Marin reported yesterday.

The fraud continued for years, in part because of a “hopelessly conflicted” agency that allowed the practice to continue and ignored an early warning from a London case, the ombudsman said.

And now everybody and their dog is bitching and moaning about getting ripped off by the big, friendly OLGC that was supposed to exist just so that they could become millionaires and retire to someplace with a very un-Canadian climate some day.

Piss off.

I’m sick and tired of hearing about how evil the redneck retirement fund has become. Well guess what, boneheads? IT WAS ALWAYS A SCAM TO BEGIN WITH!! A lottery isn’t about raising money for charities, it’s not for covering the cost of some government projects, and it’s sure as hell not there to give you any damn money.

It’s a tax, plain and simple. It’s a tax on people that are bad at math. So either get smart enough to figure out what your odds are of getting hit by lightning while skull-schtupping Pam Anderson, or shut the hell up.

Well, the Ontario Fiberals put out their budget and I have to say that I sort of feel like I’m through the looking glass. Where Flaherty did one hell of a Santa act, Sorbara seems almost… how the hell am I going to put this?

Sensible… 😯

Sorbara says it’s not an election budget. He ain’t kidding there. There’s no new taxes in it (not even booze or smokes, always favourite targets), but there’s no tax cuts, either. All in all, I haven’t been able to find a hell of a lot wrong with it (and you just know that I’m the kind of guy that would look) so far, except for one rather nasty little thing: this talk about cranking up the minimum wage by over 28%. Now, I’m all for people being able to make a living wage. I work for a living myself and yes, if the minimum wage hops to $10.25 an hour, I’ll be making more money. And I still think it’s a bad idea. Now, why in God’s name would I think that?? Well, it’s simple, really: nobody seems to have thought about Bob.

NO, I don’t mean Bob Rae… Screw Bob Rae. I wouldn’t piss in his mouth if his tongue was on fire. So who the hell am I babbling about, anyway? Well, let me tell ya…

Bob’s a regular kind of guy. Has himself a house, mortgage, wife, couple o’ kids… all that middle class stuff. After a bunch of years working for other people, Bob went out and set up a business of his own. Sure, it doesn’t make a buttload of money, but it pays the bills with a little left over to sock away and to buy some nice stuff for the kids when Christmas and birthdays come around. All in all, Bob thinks he’s doing pretty okay for himself.

It doesn’t matter what Bob’s business does. Screw it; let’s say he makes Widgetsâ„¢ and sells ’em. Bob’s got 10 guys that work for him, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (Bob shuts the Widget mill down on weekends so people can have time with their families; he’s a nice guy that way) for the minimum wage, $8.00 per hour. So a little math tells us that right now, Bob’s forking out $640 a day in wages to his ten guys. This is all Bob can afford to pay, and I DO mean ALL. Like I said, Bob’s doing okay for himself but he’s not exactly swimming in it.

Now, imagine Bob’s payroll expense jumps up to $820. Bob ain’t got that kind of money, boys and girls. No way, no how. So what the hell’s Bob gonna do? Unlike some people, Bob doesn’t make his Widgetsâ„¢ for the government, he has to compete in the real world market, where people can take their money someplace else. If Bob jacks up the price of his Widgets by 25%, he’s going to lose business. A lot of folks are just going to say, “screw that, I’ll start buying Mexican Widgets; or maybe I’ll just drive out to the local Indian reserve and buy my Widgets there.”

So how the hell is Bob going to stay in business when he can’t realistically raise his prices and he can’t afford more than $640 a day in wages? It’s simple: two guys are getting laid off and another one is having his hours cut. Plain and simple.

All the warm, fuzzy socialist thinking in the world won’t stop the relentless grind of the simple laws of economics. Crank up wages by over 25%, like the Fiberals and Dippers are howling for, and some people are going to lose their jobs. End of discussion.

And that helps the working poor… how??

Well now, isn’t this special? It seems that London’s City Council has decided that the time has come to hop aboard the rooftop turbine bandwagon. “City council will be asked to pass a bylaw Monday to regulate the new green power, small versions of the turbines popping up along the shores of lakes Erie and Huron,” says the story in today’s Freeps. This is what we pay these clowns for, folks. 🙄

Yes indeed, the keepers of the Dufferin Avenue Widget Factory are just as ga-ga over wind power as any Kyotology kultist. Mother nature is gonna huff and puff for us and blow away all our energy worries. Coun. Joni Baechler ( the planning committee chairperson) is all gung ho for the whole thing:

“We absolutely have to. Anything we can do to divert demand from coal-fired plants, the better it is for our air quality.”

Well, at least she’s not flogging the global-warming-from-CO² horse. While I don’t swallow the idea that something that’s exhaled by every animal on the planet is going to boil the oceans, it is kind of hard to argue about smog if you’ve looked out a window any time in the last few years. Jim Rowan is equally enthusiastic:

“I’d say three to five years […] Right now, it’s only the occasional brave individual who does it. But I liken these to the home personal computer. It took off, completely supplanting the existing computer market.”

Well, of course he thinks it’s the greatest thing since the stubby got banished; he’s the co-designer of a rooftop turbine called the Mag-Wind, so he stands to clean up on this latest eco-fad.

So what the hell’s got a stick up my backside about all this, you ask? It’s simple: the do-gooders are, yet again, ignoring a few inconvenient truths themselves. While I’m all for improving our environment, the fact is that these damn things just aren’t practical. Don’t believe me? Well then, let’s just take a look at this then, shall we?

For the purposes of this little exercise, let’s make ourselves a whole lot of warm, fuzzy assumptions, just like the eco-dorks do. Let’s assume that:

1. The wind will actually blow all the time; 24/7, 365 days a year. Even on those Sweltering August days when the air is like a war, wet blanket over you and your buttcrack is doing an impression of Niagara Falls that would put Rich Little to shame.
2. Let’s also assume that the wind in the city is going to blow just like the wind in the country. It wont be bothered by large obstructing buildings, uneven windflow that you always get in urban areas, or roof designs that didn’t have wind flow in mind.
3. Let’s pretend the turbine will always function at its peak design efficiency (even though they never have), consistently cranking out 5KW, without any interruption at all. Ever.
4. As long as we’re feeling frisky, let’s assume that the cost of electricity is going to stay at the current rate of about 5.5¢/KWh, because we all know how stable the energy market is.
5. While we’re blabbing about energy markets, let’s say that you can sell 100% of all your excess production back to the public grid; at 5.5¢/KWh, of course.
6. Let’s throw the laws of mechanics, and all the things that says about moving parts, out the window and assume that these things won’t cost one thin dime in maintenance. Even though they’ve come under fire for problems with vibrations.
7. Why not say that you’re rich enough that you’ve got an extra $20,000 (minimum!) lying around to pay for this gizmo in cash. Or that Big Nanny will give you an interest-free loan to finance the thing.
8. And it’s going to be totally tax free, too. Hey, we’re in tree-hugger lala land here, remember?

So, now that we’ve got our arses all stuffed with sunshine and lollipops, what are we looking at? Well, let’s do some math.

(5.5¢/KWh) x 5KW of output x (24hrs/day) x 365 days in a year = a savings of $2409 every year.

Damn, that’s not too bad. I could use an extra 2400 bucks in my pocket every year, couldn’t you? There’s just one little fly in the ointment:

$20 grand ÷ ($2409/year) = about 8yrs, 4 months before you so much as break even.

In eight and a half years, you’ll break even. If the wind never stops blowing, the thing never breaks down, Big Nanny keeps her hand out of your pocket, and a monkey flies out of your ass.

Yes, alternative and renewable energy sources are a good thing. But let’s quit with all the pie-in-the-sky shit and be practical about it, alright?

Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. What I’d like to know is, how the hell did Tootoo catch on to Robidas coming up behind him like that? For those wondering what you’re about to see, here it is in a nutshell:

Tootoo creams Modano with a high-but-clean hit and then sends Robidas to the corner of WhereTheHell & AmI, seemingly by sense of smell, before getting whacked across the back by Modano’s stick after he peeled himself off the ice. Things got cranky from there and Robidas ended up riding the stretcher off the ice. Final tally: no majors, charging for Robidas and double roughing for Tootoo.

I repeat: how the HELL did Tootoo smell that guy coming?? Robidas clearly thought he had the element of surprise, or else he never would have led with his chin like that…