No way! Can’t be true! Before a long weekend??? C’mon! You’re pulling
my chain!!!

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

I might just go out and buy something from Mark’s Work Wearhouse this weekend!

Closing the plant had immediate political reverberations on Parliament Hill and at Queen’s Park.

Electro-Motive received $5 million in federal tax breaks announced on the factory floor by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008. That was before the plant was sold to its current owners in 2010, prompting questions from the union as to whether there were any strings attached to the money.

“I don’t know how we can hand these guys money like that with no job guarantees. It’s unconscionable,” said Lewenza, who rushed to London to meet with workers Friday after being informed of the closure by a senior Caterpillar official.

In Ottawa, Liberal MP and human resources critic Rodger Cuzner criticized the government for allowing the plant to shut down and poked fun at Prime Minister Stephen Harper for personally handing out the tax incentives, which went to buyers of the company’s locomotives.

“I am looking at a picture of the Prime Minister in a locomotive down in London, Ont., and he is waving. He must be waving to the 450 employees that they just let go when they shut down the plant there,” Cuzner said in the Commons during question period.

End corporate welfare, Harper. End it now.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

…earlier retirements? To some, this was the future as seen through the lenses of the mid 1990′s.

With the Robot Master and his minions raising the possibility of changing the age at which one qualifies for OAS from 65 to 67, I cannot help but think of a course that I took while completing my M.Sc at U of G on “Leisure Management Planning”. It was based on the assumption that we were destined for EARLIER retirements and MORE leisure time.

What happened, Prof. Reid?

Any USRPDers want to weigh in?

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… new IKEA…

Just saw this Tweet:

RT @OTWNews: High traffic volumes expected for IKEA opening http://bit.ly/vueh9N #Ottawa #Ottcity

PEOPLE! Are you off your rockers?? It’s just a freaking STORE fer crissakes!

Grow up! The bloody thing will still be there next week!

Sigh. I just don’t understand people sometimes… guess I must be the weird
one.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… and I have a few…

Tell me something.

Greece. Italy. Portugal. Et cetera. All that economic shit-storm stuff that is happening in those corners of the planet…

I see the main root of the problem being the consequence of horribly enforced tax collection regimes. Tax evasion has been a hobby in these countries – and this is documented widely. But until recently, all levels of government in these nations have turned blind eyes to this.

And… some of these nations have been ruled by left of centre parties for a while, so and the nations’ monetary and fiscal policies have reflected this.

So my question – is the sorry state of these nations’ economies the result of socialist monetary and fiscal policy – or poor revenue management? I’ve seen it blamed on both…

What say you?

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

I particularly like the last paragraph on the BBC 4 site:

“…without statistics we are cast adrift on an ocean of confusion, but armed with stats we can take control of our lives, hold our rulers to account and see the world as it really is.”

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

… is only putting off the inevitable unless something more substantive can be done to alleviate the unfathomable levels of American debt. Americans are going to have to pay now – because the price to pay later will bring their proud nation to its knees.

Usually, The Onion is a work of satire. Usually. But after reading this entry this morning, I kind of have to think that the authors were being a little more than tongue-in-cheek…

Following Sunday’s pathetic excuse for an agreement on raising the government’s borrowing limit, Democrats and Republicans took time to celebrate the meager, ineffective deal, calling it “a testament to the not-so-great things that can happen in Washington when both parties barely come together and agree to not really accomplish anything.

American politics has become so damned polarised in the past decade that simply agreeing on the time of day can be considered an occasion worthy of celebration. The arrival of the radical Tea Party-ists has made the finding of any common ground between Republicans and Democrats next to impossible.

And this is really bad news for my American friends as this is a critical time in their history. In my very humble opinion, I think that not since their Civil War has there been a greater crisis. All levels of government and many households and businesses are barely treading water or are on life support.

My thoughts are in sync with those of Jeffrey Simpson when he wrote this:

Americans can blame foreigners if they want for some of these problems – currency manipulation by China, unfair trading practices, companies shipping jobs offshore – but they’re mostly responsible for their own problems. Systematically, Americans have refused to tax themselves at levels commensurate with their spending. The result of this collective irresponsibility has finally caught up with them.

They waged wars while cutting taxes, as in Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush’s disastrous regime. They let the Pentagon budget explode, raised the costs of public health care (as in Mr. Bush’s unfunded drug plan for seniors), kept the cost of gasoline below that of any Western country, left the financial sector largely unregulated until its excesses brought the economy to its knees, and designed an immensely costly and, in many respects, quite foolish Homeland Security apparatus.

In the days when the King of the land decided to go to war, he sent out word to his Lords that they must help to fund the mission. The Lords, in turn, sent out tax collectors to the towns and countryside to get what they could in order to fund their Lord’s obligation to his monarch. Without these monies, the King could not run his wars nor keep the royal treasury stocked. Credit was non-existent save for some parts of the world where usury was an accepted practice.

No money. No way to pay for arms, arrow fodder and supplies. Ergo, no wars.

Flash ahead to today. Americans of all stripes must simply realise that in the absence of adequate personal and corporate tax levels they cannot wages wars – or live in a modern democratic country – without paying for a significant proportion of its operations.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Honestly, after reading this, I think I’d take Bosnia over one of the Montreal bridges, overpasses or tunnels…

What a shame. And disgrace.

But look y’all, before we in the RoC start feeling all smug-like, start looking at the condition of some of the streets etc. in your neck of the woods. Many of us are not that far behind QC, infrastructure crisis-wise…

Big bills coming up… just saying…

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1032836–large-concrete-slab-collapses-in-montreal-tunnel?bn=1

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

Seen yesterday at the BMO branch at the corner of Smyth and Russell.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario

President Obama is warning of one if the debt ceiling is not lifted.

The American government will exceed its legislated debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion in August.

Trillion.

14,300,000,000,000.

Holy crap.

According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (yeah, they’re weenies and you’ll seldom hear me say anything good about them), our debt stands at $559 billion. That puts our national debt about 4% of the American debt. And we have about 10% of the population.

Wow.

Neil Macdonald wrote this article a few weeks back on the American attitude to debt. In short, the goal of  many Americans is not to pay your debts, but to try everything in your power to wriggle your way out of them altogether or to negotiate a lower payback.

Before he dropped out of the Presidential race, that looney-tune Donald Trump basically said “meh” when asked what happens when the government hits the legislated debt ceiling and is no longer able to borrow money and service their debts.

“I don’t think you have to default,” he told a White House reporter. “You’re going to have to make a deal someplace.”

And this is a normal attitude of many who inhabit the land to our south.

Watch commercial TV in this country for a few hours and you’ll see what I mean. It’s strewn with advertisements for companies that claim they’ll “stand up to your creditors.”

Owe more than $10,000 in back taxes? Hire us and we’ll negotiate with the IRS for you. You might only have to pay a fraction of what you owe!

Big credit card bills? Hire us and we’ll deal with those awful banks. We may persuade them to forgive some debt!

Can’t pay your mortgage? Hire us and we’ll negotiate a “principal reduction.” There are even government agencies to help with that one.

Try Googling “personal debt negotiate reduction” and look at the number of hits. Seven million plus.

Pair this thinking with the widespread opposition to any further government borrowing and Trump’s make-a-deal idea is crack for the masses.

So whose fault is it?

Politicians that fall on the Tea Party side of the wacky ledger say “Hey, no worries! We’ll keep taxes low, privatize just about everything and no one needs to feel any pain!” And the voters buy these lines eagerly! They fear those damned socialists in the White House who are asking to put the country into more debt. Yet they had better leave my services alone.

And it is a-OK to walk away from your debt and damn the consequences.

I don’t like this mix. Too much globally depends on a healthy – or at least a breathing American economy.

Neil Macdonald is scared by all this – and so am I.

Trashy,
Ottawa, Ontario