Tag politics

Ottawa’s police: we pay the bills, shouldn’t we set the budget?

Apparently property taxes are going up by about $96 per house next year. In general, I don't have a problem with tax hikes. I think taxes make a lot of sense. But in this case I'm willing to make an exception. Why? Because of that whole taxation without representation thing.

cmkl
February 8, 2005

Bob Rae: lesson on squishing your enemies

Bob Rae has spent the year or so (at least) "studying" the problems of post-secondary education in Ontario. The usual problems: poor funding, rising tuition fees, pathetic student supports. His solution is higher tuition fees. How do I know this? His report was "leaked" to the Globe and Mail for its Saturday edition. Bob has learned how to spin, it seems.

cmkl
February 5, 2005

The voter turnout in pre-Tet Vietnam was pretty good too

Media who should know better have been making much of the "higher than expected" voter turnout in the recent election in Iraq. But as Al-Jazeera points out, voter turnout was pretty high in Vietnam in 1967.

cmkl
February 3, 2005

Are we becoming a nation of prurient finks?

I can't believe some poor man in Nanaimo BC did four months in jail for masturbating in his own house. He was sentenced to jail for committing an indecent act after he was ratted out by two neighbours observing him through a chink in their blinds.

cmkl
January 27, 2005

Air Canada wildcat: who’s got the power?

While the Toronto Star's David Olive at least bothers to have a peak at why those Machinists at Pearson walked off the job the other day, he still has on the usual ideological blinkers that make him think that it's okay for one rich man to exercise arbitrary power over travellers, but it's not okay for a hundred working stiffs to do the same thing.

cmkl
January 21, 2005

CIBC cries the crocodile’s tears

There's been much said this week of a StatCan report released this week that says the real incomes of working people have been stagnant (or declining) for the last fifteen years or so. Right wing commentators and "experts" have the predictable analysis (the answer is more of the same). But this CIBC press release is just over the top obnoxious.

cmkl
January 20, 2005

If I shot myself in the head with a nail gun…

...I'd want health insurance. This wierd news story will no doubt end up all over the net for years to come but I wanted to highlight what for me seemed like the real punch line: Despite his lack of medical insurance and hospital bills between $80,000 and $100,000 (U.S.), Katerina Lawler said her husband is in good spirits.

cmkl
January 17, 2005