Tories Attack Laytons Moustache

In one of the cheapest shots of this campaign the Tories have launched an attack ad on Jack Laytons Moustache. No seriously. The ad is all about Jack's Moustache which is superimposed over various peoples faces. It's not about the NDP or policies or even Jack it's his moustache.

Someone in the Conservative War Room with links to the Marijauna Party,( was it Jaffer? asks a little voice) must have shared some BC ThunderF**k around and they all got a terrible giggle out of this.

And they only ran it in B.C. cause they are worried, hoot hoot, puff puff, B.C. home of the Marijauna Party....man thats good stuff.....that the NDP will gain seats from them.

Its not even worthy of being termed an attack ad. It might be better called a Saturday Night Live ad. And it lies. It makes up accusations against the NDP or excuse me Laytons talking Moustache.

The NDP may not blog but their rapid response knocked this fabrication out of the ball park. The ad will probably not air anymore. Here is a case where someone can ask the Tories; What Idiot Approved This.

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Canada
Federal Election
Politics
media
Politics
NDP
Jack Layton

Liberals Support NDP

The NDP has a new TVad out and it's not an attack ad.
It's a Strategic Vote ad, one that should counter the Buzz factor.



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Canada
Federal Election
Politics
NDP
Paul Martin
Jack Layton
Liberals

Another Example of Mutual Aid

Here is another example of interspecies Mutual Aid that so fascinated the anarchist biologist Peter Kropotkin and that I have blogged about here before.

In this case it is a very unusual case of mutual aid between two diametrically opposite species, reptile and mammal. And this story links to an earlier one about a lioness taking care of three baby oryx which normally she would hunt as food. Call these my anarchist feel good stories.

Odd couple make friends in Kenya

Mzee and Owen have become firm friends despite the age gap

A baby hippo rescued after floods in Kenya last week has befriended a 100-year-old tortoise in Kenya.

The one-year-old hippo calf christened Owen was found alone and dehydrated by wildlife rangers near the Indian Ocean.

He was placed in an enclosure at a wildlife sanctuary in the coastal city of Mombasa and befriended a male tortoise of a similar colour.

According to a park official, they sleep together, eat together and "have

become inseparable".

"Since Owen arrived on the 27 December, the tortoise behaves like a mother to it," Haller Park tourism manager Pauline Kimoti told the BBC News website.

"The hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face," she said.

The tortoise is named Mzee, which is Swahili for old man.

Ms Kimoti said that if the 300kg hippo continued to thrive then in the next few weeks they would allow the public to see the unlikely pair together before they are separated.

The sanctuary, which is on the site of a former cement factory, plans eventually to get the help of the Kenya Wildlife Service to place Owen with Cleo, a lonely female hippo in a separate enclosure.

This is the latest in a series of unusual bondings in the wild that have surprised and delighted zoologists in Kenya.

In 2002, a lioness at Samburu National Park adopted a succession of baby oryx.


Also see:Is Your Boss a 600lb Gorilla and Primate Man

Tags
anarchism
Libertarian
Mutual Aid
evolution
Darwin
Kropotkin

Let the Games Begin

Its a tie at Whack the PM game between the Harper and the Martin. Jack's Moustache wins!

The NDP have a new game too....









A tip o the blog to Daveberta for these.

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Canada
Federal Election
Politics

Klein Steals From The Poor And Disabled

Ebenezer Klein, King of Alberta likes to kick the poor, the disabled and the homeless around.

Last election he made an issue of the disabled and those on AISH as being less than deserving then Martha and Henry, his severely normal Albertans.

During a protest about Alberta AISH payments being below the poverty line King Ralph with royal disdain claimed that most folks on AISH were probably faking it cause they smoke and drink just like him.

Well today the poor, the disabled and the widowed who have had the Alberta Government stealing their federal funds from them have had their day in court. The Alberta government spent years clawing back federal payments and failed for over a decade to increase AISH until this year. While pocketing the difference.

Now who looks stupid. Alberta settles $100M case over financial assistance payments

In Alberta when you first don't succeed in stealing folks money that is sent to them from the Federal government try, try again is the Klein Reich motto.

Disabled hail AISH settlement

The class-action lawsuit was brought forward by two men representing those who were either underpaid by government support programs or who were subjected to what they claim were illegal and abusive debt collection processes initiated by the province.

AISH recipient Donald Fifield of Tees, in the County of Lacombe, was underpaid more than $10,000 in the 1980s. At the time, government policy limited restitution to six months' worth of losses, regardless of how long the underpayments went on. Under the terms of the settlement, Fifield will be eligible for as much as $30,000, which includes compound interest and the effect of a multiplier formula.

The policy was changed in 2005 and now the government will pay the full amount owed, if it is found to have underpaid pension and social assistance recipients.

The lawsuit said the government erred when collecting debts it claimed were owed by program recipients.

Due to a bureaucratic error, Curtis Roth of Tofield received an overpayment from the province to top up his monthly $980 Canada Pension Plan payment for several years when he was unable to work due to illness. When the $16,000 error was discovered, the government began to deduct the amount owing from Roth's monthly AISH payment, reducing his cheques to $40.

The class-action suit, filed by Edmonton lawyer Philip Tinkler, contended the government went against its own policy on debt repayment, which required the government to seek permission from the Court of Queen's Bench to reduce the pension payments, or reach an agreement with the recipient.

Uditsky said it's important government follows its own procedures.

"I think it's incumbent for the government to be an exemplary model for following procedure because they expect individuals with disabilities to do that all the time."

The government has changed its debt collection rules so that payments can be recovered without going through a court process or securing an agreement with the client. People who receive government payments can turn to the Citizen's Appeal Commission for redress if they have a problem with government decisions.

And here is the $100 million dollar question.

Bev Matthiessen, executive director of the Alberta Committee of Citizens with Disabilities, wonders why the government didn't deal with this issue on its own years ago. "Why is it that we have to wait and wait until it goes to a lawsuit before we can do the right thing and be fair?"

It wasn't in King Ralph's Interest. Get it Interest. Interest on $100 million. Interest and money made off the backs of the poor, widowed and the disabled. Equal to the taxes and royalties paid by Ralphs pals in the oil industry. Interest made off by the real Martha and Henry, Albertans who are not 'severely normal'. So it's ok.



Now perhaps some single mothers on welfare will sue the government for clawing back the federal child tax credit. Another clever money making ploy of the Alberta Government.

Guess the rest of us will have to wait for our prosperity bribe, err bonus cheques a little longer while Ralph digs around in his treasury to make things right.
$400 rebate cheques will arrive in the new year

More Ralph Stories

Also See Alberta Surplus and Alberta Uber Alles

Tags
Canada
Alberta
disabled
Politics
AISH
PC
Ralph Klein
Conservatives

Calgary Ponzi Scheme

Welcome to the wild wild west of booming Alberta. Here is an interesting ponzi scheme conducted by a couple in Calgary. Always Calgary of course, cause that's where the corporate headquarters for Big Oil is. And where the middle class dominate with their Party of Calgary (PC) that rules the province under King Ralph.

This is a story of how the Calgary Board of Education opposed the Alberta government over their underfunding of public education and had the government close their board down in an unprecidented political attack on democracy.

Sharon Hester was a nice middle of the road CBE Public Trustee who survived that anti-democratic debacle and was re-elected. Until it was discovered that she and her husband were also profiting off the new market in public education set up by the Alberta government.

With market driven education now fully embraced by the CBE this is a story of how one trustee and her husband tried to profit off all of this. Amidst all the chaos of introducing the Free Market into education, they decided to engage in a bit of classic free marketing of their own.

One has to ask why it took the organized crime/fraud squad three years to lay charges. And one has to ask why this ponzi scheme was allowed to bilk people for so long. It's an apocryphal story of Alberta Greed.

Former trustee charged in scam

Alleged scheme raised $1.36M

Former school trustee Sharon Hester faces a charge of using the proceeds of crime.

Photograph by : Calgary Herald Archive

Sherri Zickefoose, Calgary Herald

Published: Friday, January 13, 2006

Police have laid 40 charges of fraud against a 65-year-old Calgarian alleged to be at the centre of a $1.36-million Ponzi scheme following a two-and-half-year investigation.

Jim Hester is accused of operating an alleged investment scam that ran for years and brought in millions of dollars under the name Team Education Inc.

From Sept. 26, 2003: School trustee Hester resigns


Team Education controversy rolls into Stettler
Calgary-based company currently under investigation by commercial crime
TOM MacDOUGALL
Independent Editor
September 24, 2003
The fog settling over a Calgary-based company that raised funds for educational purposes now extends to Stettler.
Jean Schell joins a growing list of investors in Team Education who say the company, operated by Jim Hester, hasn’t come through on the promised interest payments on their investments.
Hester’s business has been facing increasing scrutiny over the past few weeks, scrutiny which only heightened last week when his wife, Sharon, temporarily stepped down from her position as trustee on the Calgary Board of Education. She cited the controversy as part of her reasoning for her absence.
Team Education promotional material commits to use funds raised from investors to assist high needs children pay for food, clothing, school fees, sports equipment and the like.
Schell got involved with Team Education in February 2002, on the advice of her financial agent, Primerica representative Tamara Traub. The investment seemed to be a good way to save for the future, promising a rate of return of seven per cent per month.
As security, Schell was provided with a post-dated cheque for her principal and another for her interest.
“It was good on paper,” said Schell.
Believing it a sound investment, Schell re-invested her principal and interest at the end of the first term. She didn’t think anything more of it until her daughter, Tammy Duncan — also a Team Education investor — tried to cash her own cheque in February of this year. It bounced.
Schell started to get concerned about her money, with a term set to mature in May, and called Hester. She says he told her to hold off cashing her cheques and promised to send out new ones. He did, but when Schell tried to cash one of the new ones, it bounced too.
Duncan, who says she has been trying to get her money back since that first cheque bounced, hasn’t had any more luck than her mother.
“He always promised to give me money,” said Duncan. “But he never has.”
Peter Boys, a Stettler financial agent, is helping Schell file a formal complaint with the Alberta Securities Commission.
“From what I see, this was probably a fairly legitimate investment at one time, but somewhere along the line it just derailed,” said Boys. “You can’t support seven per cent a month with any kind of investment.”
Both Boys and Schell hope other Stettler residents with their money tied up in Team Education will come forward to divulge their experiences, and lodge a complaint.

The 1998 Calgary Awards were handed out to 18 citizens and
organizations today for their outstanding commitment to our
community.
Recipients of Community Achievement Awards Jim Hester
(Community Service),

January 30, 2003

Is this legal? Supposedly they want you to loan money so they can do charitable fundraising for schools, not keep a cent, give all the profits to schools but still give you a minimum of 15% per annum return on your loan? They provide a legitimate volunteer community reference,Jim Hester, in the Calgary (Canada) Community (1,2). Yet he's no where to be found on the contact pages. He's mentioned in Better Business Bureau entry which surprisingly lists the company as a "FOR PROFIT" organization. It all just seems so strange. Does this trick investors into feeling they are investing for charity? Why does the website call themselves "Team Capital" while they advertise the volunteer efforts of "Team Education"? Why don't they list any of the schools they have helped or the projects they were involved with? Is this legitimate or a scam?
posted by abez at 8:13 PM PST - 7 comments

Having learnt the valuable lesson that it is better to go along with the Klein Reich than oppose it the CBE has become the very model of P3 education in Alberta, which is descibed below in the article by Andrew Nikiforuk. But here are a couple of examples of public money going to pay for private profit;

MetaBlog of Bloggers » Blog Archive » Calgary Board of Education ...
Calgary Board of Education contracts TELUS Sourcing Solutions to provide human resource management. The Calgary Board of Education has signed a 10-year approximately $65 million.

Johnson Systems - Calgary Board of Education Testimonial

In all this political manuvering based upon the Alberta government adopting a Republican education program, the CBE has been the favorite strawdog of the rightwing in Calgary including of course the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives and their backers in the NCC which is headquartered in Calgary. The CBE was forced to adapt to their demands as more and more students dropped out and went to Charter and Private schools. With voucher funding in Alberta, the money follows the student, the CBE faced a continuing crisis of what to do about closing schools, due to reduced enrollment. Schools that the right wing wanted to use for Charter Schools.

CALGARY EDUCATION CRISIS 1999


FFWD Weekly - December 2nd, 1999

Voters choose new school trustees

Calgary voters elected six rookie trustees and one incumbent Monday, and showed strong support for increased government spending on education.

Danielle Smith :: daniellesmith.ca

Calgary Herald
Tuesday, November 30, 1999

Board must act to stop exodus

Characterizing the educational divide in school board politics as a partisan split or a battle between conservatives and liberals is a messy shorthand.

While it's true that many tenured trustees go on to seek higher office, it is seldom partisan politics that determines their ideological positions while a member of the local school board.

If the division between political parties was a crevice, the educational divide would be the Grand Canyon.

Public education is littered with educational fads that have demonstrated little in the way of enhanced student achievement. Whether it be integrated classrooms, multi-aging, whole language, or no-fail policies, the system has created numerous education casualties. Graduates become the walking wounded, ill-prepared to face the rigours of post-secondary studies or enter the workforce with superior competence.

It's the predictable outcome of a system that coddles kids in elementary school, warehouses them in junior high, then plays catch-up in high school in a belated attempt to make up for lost time.

The past experience of those who sought educational reform in other jurisdictions and failed -- failed miserably, too -- is a sorry history lesson that we are about to witness in Calgary. Particularly after Monday night's election.

For the past five years trustees, the administration and the teachers' union have been in lock step arguing that chronic under-funding is what ails the CBE. The pitch heightened in recent years with the claims that the system was on the brink of financial collapse.

What the education establishment didn't count on was parents taking it at its word -- and taking their kids promptly out of public schools.

In the past this was no big deal. When fed-up parents pulled their kids to put them in private schools, their tax dollars continued to go to the public board. The CBE didn't complain about any loss of enrolment. It got to keep the money, but didn't have to educate the children.

All that changed in 1994 when funding began to follow the student. Innovations such as charter and home schooling and partially-funded private schooling gave parents educational options they never had. Students left the system by the thousands and took their basis student grants with them.

It's no wonder school boards have been whipping up public sentiment to return things to the way they were. The CBE monopoly is in its death throes, collapsing under the weight of its inability to compete with more traditional approaches to education. Rather than change, the education establishment has gone into denial. No one has even followed up with parents to find out why they left or what would bring them back.

And yet the solution to the CBE's funding woes lies in attracting more students.

However, it's not that simple.

The board needs to build new schools where the kids are. In the 1960s a ring of schools were built in the established communities outside the inner-city ring. The Baby Boom resulted in a building boom and 30 years later, with average family size a fraction of what it once was, school populations have dwindled. To get money to build new schools the board has to shut down some of the old ones, not an easy task.

TRUSTEE SLAMS CHARTER SCHOOL'S SPECIAL TREATMENT

Allowing ABC Charter School to only have to report to the minister of education means public funds are being used to support an independent school, a public school trustee has warned. "This is the use of public funds for an independent purpose, not a community purpose," trustee Jennifer Pollock said Tuesday. "Public accountability isn't in the (charter school) legislation. . . I'm disappointed they're not wanting to be publicly involved with the greater community."

Pollock made the comments after the ABC school made its final report to the Calgary Board of Education before coming under the direct control of Education Minister Gary Mar.

Principal Jo-Anne Koch said the Grades 1 to 3 school for gifted children will still have to answer to educational criteria when it reports to the minister. Although its program is designed for gifted students, the school will accept any who wish to challenge that program, Koch said. The only reason for turning away children has been lack of sufficient space, she added.

--From The Calgary Herald, June 10, 1998

Mar announces team to review Calgary Board of Education

LEARNING MINISTER FIRES THE CALGARY BOARD OF EDUCATION
LEARNING MINISTER FIRES THE CALGARY BOARD OF EDUCATION. OVER 7-IN-10 CALGARIANS SIDE WITH LEARNING MINISTER LYLE OBERG'S DECISION

Presentation to ACL by Fred Latreille , CUPE Local 40
In the 1992-93 Calgary Board of Education budget, a total of sixty-five caretaker
... Calgary Board of Education was not chosen to be among the Boards ...

School of Hard Knocks
As the Calgary Board of Education prepares to issue its annual school closure list next month, a dedicated group of parents is fighting to save inner-city schools, and to ask for a urban renewal and a 10-year plan.
By ANDREW NIKIFORUK

School’s Out Forever

School closures are ferociously contested, often to no avail. Now, a group of concerned parents is asking some simple questions—what’s wrong with small schools, and why can’t public schools have multi-uses? Parent lobbying has resulted in two changes: Next month, public school trustees might not issue the usual school closure list, and they must provide the province with a 10-year plan

avenue magazine | features Sept 2004

By ANDREW NIKIFORUK

Inflexible provincial funding formulas also play a role in this game. Alberta’s centralized calculation stipulates that boards will get no funding for new schools unless the existing ones are 85 per cent full. In most cases, sharing space with community groups or daycare does not affect this calculation. In other words, if that remarkable community asset known as a school isn’t full of CBE kids, it is not full.

This rigid thinking has a history at the CBE. In 1978, the board proposed closing 31 schools in order to save $1 million. It argued then that “the continuous shift in the student population from the older more established areas to the new subdivisions” was thinning out schools in the city centre and crowding those in the suburbs.

The proposal met with overwhelming resistance from citizens and even editorial writers. “The board really underestimated how people saw schools as critical to their community,” notes former Calgary city planner Frank Palermo, now a professor at Dalhousie University. “We actually managed to get rid of the idea, but it keeps on resurfacing.” The problem, then as now, is that school boards and city planners don’t talk. “There is not much co-operation or communication between the two,” Palermo says. “The system just doesn’t work that way.” The uproar taught the CBE that the best way to kill schools was one at a time. Since then, the board has closed nearly 30 schools—13 in the last 10 years.

But while the board was closing doors, the province was making things more difficult for the CBE by opening up the school marketplace by granting money to private and charter schools. Parents alienated by public school closures had a choice, and the CBE started to lose students in the mid 1990s. According to civic census data, between 1990 and 2002 the percentage of public school supporters fell from 75 per cent to 61 per cent, while private school supporters climbed from three to 14 per cent.

Ken Low, a former CBE consultant, estimates that approximately half the schools closed by the board became private or charter schools because “the best use for a school is still a school.” In other words, the board’s determination to close schools has become “a willful act of self-destruction,” adds Low. Much to the surprise of the ICSC, the CBE actually understood all these facts. After careful analysis of its problems in 1999, the board even adopted a new process to govern the building and closing of schools.

Low was hired to develop that new deal. His solution, called Learning Environmental Action Plan (LEAP), emphasized shared decision-making among parents, community and the board. LEAP also included options to school closure, including using the school for an alternative program, or sharing space with seniors or the health authority. It was pretty visionary stuff, and in the first year of LEAP one community, Acadia, voluntarily agreed to close two schools. Such a thing had never happened in Canada before.

But in the spring of 2001 the CBE undermined the whole process by recommending the closure of 19 schools or seven more than agreed to by local communities in the LEAP process. As a result, the trustees fired Superintendent Donna Michaels, while trustee Jane Cawthorne resigned in disgust at the board’s open contempt for democracy. Next, LEAP consultants got the axe. Trustees then silently “disengaged” LEAP and purged the system of all reports on the million-dollar reform effort.

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Alberta
CBE
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Ponzi
PC
Ralph Klein
Calgary

Layton Gives Buzz the Finger

Layton intensifies attack on Martin at huge NDP rally
The theme song Won't Get Fooled Again played as more than 1,000 union members and NDP supporters cheered for Layton at the city's Exhibition Place. Yep take that Buzz. We won't get fooled again.

"This time it's time to change your vote," said Layton, who repeatedly named Martin as he condemned the Liberal government in his speech. "If you voted Liberal in the past, then this time we're asking you to vote for a tough, disciplined, talented, experienced NDP team, a team that have proved that they are superbly good at getting results in Parliament for you – and that's exactly what we're going to need."

Oh and while we are at it some trade unionists still have principles. In this case they kicked Paul Martin out of their union hall here in Edmonton when they found out the Liberals had rented it.

Whose laughing now Buzz.

Labour czar fears Harper gov't will quickly make a right turn

From the very beginning of the current tilt, Hargrove made headlines by urging Canadians to vote strategically -- To underline the point, he appeared twice with Paul Martin in the campaign's first week, not exactly making Jack Layton's day.

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Canada
Federal Election
Politics
NDP
Paul Martin
Jack Layton
Liberals

Income Trusts Love Tories

On Friday the 13th while making the Conservative Platform public, without all its real costs, the Harper announced yet another tax cut for rich. Which will help out those poor embattled, underprivileged Income Trusts. The folks that already don't pay taxes. What the Conservative capital gains tax cut will do is drive more corporations into becoming non taxpaying Income Trusts. And this helps us how?

Tory government would allow deferral of capital gains taxes
Patrick Kim, vice-president of investments at KBSH Capital Management in Toronto, said the Conservative capital gains measure might encourage more companies to convert into income trusts.


Also see: Income Trusts


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Canada
Federal Election
Politics
Conservatives
tax cuts
Income Trusts

Why Canwest Supports Harper

Well lets see could it be because it has an income trust? A trust that lost money because of the Liberals, the party they used to support. CanWest slams Ottawa over handling of trusts

And while reporting record profits the company has blundered on supporting the money losing National Pest and then there is their spin off free paper the Dose that has given them the financial clap, losing them money.

Analyst questions CanWest papers' viability

After talk of cost cutting at CanWest Global Communications Corp. this week, the media company is facing tough questions from an analyst at BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. about the viability of some of its publications.

In a research note to clients, Tim Casey raised concerns yesterday about the future of CanWest's free daily publication, Dose, which began eight months ago and is losing money. The analyst also maintained a bearish outlook for the flagship National Post newspaper, a competitor of The Globe and Mail.

"We would not be surprised to see the Post and Dose publications close down in this fiscal year. We ascribe no value to either asset in our valuation," Mr. Casey said in the note.

Responding to the comments, CanWest chief executive officer Leonard Asper said there are no plans to alter the course of either newspaper in the next three years.

"I think the analysts are a little off the mark there," Mr. Asper said, adding that Dose has not made money but is still in its start-up phase. "Any business takes some time, a few years -- usually three is the standard -- of losses before you start to get some profits."

In a week that saw most of the country's biggest media companies report their first-quarter earnings, CanWest's results were behind the pack. Dose is part of the CanWest MediaWorks Income Fund, a trust spun out last fall with most of the company's newspaper assets.

CanWest MediaWorks told analysts Wednesday that the trust is scaling back the distribution and size of Dose. However, Mr. Asper said he remains "bullish" on Dose.

The trust, which does not include the National Post, made a profit of $30.7-million in its first quarter since the conversion, compared with $20.9-million for the comparable assets a year earlier. However, most of those gains came from the tax advantages of converting to an income trust, the company said.

As I reported here Canwest was a major contributor to Harpers Leadership campaign.

And despite making record profits this year, Canwest still plans to lay off workers, in order to increase their profitability for next year.


Yep thats Corporate Canada business as usual screw the workers to make more profit. Sounds like the Conservative party is in good company with these guys.

CanWest CEO says it will take time to revive laggard Canadian television operations


Also see my article on Canwest Editorializing in Newstories about the election now that David Asper has endoresed the Conservatives.

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Federal Election
Politics
Conservatives
media
Canwest News
Liberals

Comrade Harper

Oh this is rich.Working class returning to fold, Harper says

I think Comrade Harper is confused about which CPC he is leading.




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Federal Election
Politics
Harper
Communist Party of Canada
Conservatives