More Corporate Welfare

Big Business is never satisfied, it wants tax breaks and tax credits.....either way you and I pay.....So much for being job creators....the only way they can create jobs is not with their own money but yours and mine.....which shows that contrary to the rhetorical litany of the right wing government actually does create jobs.....

Auto executives also called on the federal and Ontario governments to continue offering manufacturing incentives in light of the impact the soaring loonie is having on their industry’s competitiveness.

Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/business/Free+trade+loonie+worry+auto+leaders/4312489/story.html#ixzz1EXUPuRxA

Since auto workers are taxpayers, and they and we have bailed out big auto with tax breaks, investments, bail outs, pension forgiveness, and pension give backs, as well as wage concession by unions then frankly we own Big Auto we should simply take over the industry and put it under workers control. Especially now that it is profitable again......thanks to you and me and the autoworkers.....

UPDATE 1-Ford, Chrysler Canada sales rise in January

SEE

Big Auto Crisis is the Crisis of Capitalism

There Is An Alternative To Capitalism

Auto Solution II

Secularize the State

Voices: The Lord's Prayer
Toronto Star -
We asked if it was time to replace the Lord's Prayer in the Ontario Legislature with something that better reflects the province's diversity.
Ontario premier orders review of Lord's Prayer recital Canada.com
Ont. mulls alternatives to prayer in legislature CTV.ca

No need for an alternative all inclusive prayer, if they wanted that they could have used any one of several Freemason prayers.

"And since sin has destroyed within us the first temple of purity and innocence, may they heavenly grace guide and assist us in rebuilding a second temple of reformation, and may the glory of this latter house be greater than the glory of the former."
- Masonic prayer

After all the modern state is a Masonic institution ,according to the conspiracy theories of the social conservative Christian right and their Islamic counterparts, And this 'great beast'; this Leviathan is supposedly a secular state at war with Christianity and Islam.

The best way to insure inclusiveness is to not have any prayer, since it would not include atheists, or agnostics to say nothing of pagans and wiccans who remain an anathema to the hegemonic Abrahamic religions. To be truly inclusive opening prayers should be eliminated by all levels of government.

The modern secular state was the aim and objective originally of the Masonic influenced forces of the bourgeois revolutions in America and France.

Richard J. Purcell's Connecticut in Transition, 1775-1818 (Washington~ 1918; reissued by Wesleyan in 1963) is the best published work. Purcell, who also wrote an American history text for use in Catholic parochial schools, emphasizes the religious differences among competing Protestant sects as an impetus toward the development of political parties, the disestablishment of the Congregational church, and the separation of church and state in the Constitution of 1818.

Despite the ahistorical objections of the powers that be.



SEE:

Masonic Hall T.O.

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

American Fairy Tale

Secular Democracy

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet

The Gnosis of Anarchy; Pagans, Witches, Heretics, and Luciferian Rebels


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secular state, prayer,Freemasons, prayer in Ontario Legislature, secret societies, conspiracy theories, Ontario, McGuinty,

Same Old Con

Say, isn't this how Stockwell Day got his seat?

Harper responds to release of warrants in probe of allegations candidate O'Brien used cash, contacts to get opponent to withdraw

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Stephen Harper, Harper, Mayor of Ottawa, Stockwell Day, Conservatives, Conservative Party, politics, Government, payola, Ottawa, Canada,

Ontario Election

Some notes on the Ontario election.

1. The affable approachable John Tory, the man of the people, tried to reshape the Ontario Progressive Conservatives to be the party of the people. A kinder compassionate Red Tory, went down to defeat personally in his own riding and his party stayed with the same seats it had entering the race. Tory tried to reform the Tories to be Progressive in order to divorce the party from its Harris heritage.

Tory's campaign message of more money for transit, the need for more family doctors, more funding for treatment of children with autism and for public housing, and phasing out the health tax, was drowned out by the controversy over religious school funding.

2. The Green Party made huge gains at the expense of the Conservatives!! Note that well.

The NDP gained in popular support taking votes from the Liberals, while CTV showed last night that the percentage by which the Conservatives declined in popular vote went directly to the Green Party. What does this mean Federally? Well the same. 'Progressive' Conservatives, Red Tories are abandoning the party for the Greens.

The Ontario Greens had a candidate in every riding for the first time.

Party leader Frank de Jong, who only won about 10 per cent of the vote in the Toronto riding he was running, said the political landscape has changed.

"We've tripled our vote and we've come third in many ridings," he told CTV's Naomi Parness after the results were in.

"We're thrilled. It's a huge gain. Politics will never be the same in Ontario again."

The Green leader was upbeat after winning about 8 per cent of the vote, even though he didn't achieve any of his three election aims, including the main goal – electing the first party member to a Canadian legislature.

A handful of Greens appeared set to finish third, and the party polled about 10 per cent of the vote in central and southwestern Ontario.

And while de Jong didn't get equal coverage with McGuinty, Conservative Leader John Tory and the NDP's Howard Hampton, and was excluded from their TV debate, he was regularly quoted or profiled in province-wide media outlets.

The Green buzz seemed to be confirmed when Hampton, late in the campaign, warned left-leaning voters against their "right-wing, conservative philosophy," including plans to privatize health care and other public services.

That drew a suitably angry public rebuttal from the usually upbeat and positive de Jong, a part-time elementary school music and shop teacher. "Hampton is spreading disinformation by saying such things," he said at a St. Catharines campaign stop. At the same time, he was delighted with the attention the spat produced.

All this was a huge gain from previous campaigns, when de Jong was pretty much anonymous.

3.The NDP were virtually left out of this whole election yet gained in popular support as well as gaining seats. At one point in the night it looked like they had doubled their seats to 14! In the end they got 10. A good reason to change leaders!! Hampton's lack of popularity as a potential Premier in pre-election polling dragged the party down. It had good policies and positions but that was all lost in the fracas over private religious school funding. Had they had a leader that was more outspoken and charismatic they could have gotten more seats. Unfortunately for the NDP he is promising to stick around.

NDP Leader Howard Hampton fared slightly better than Mr. Tory, in that the coverage of him generally focused on whatever issue he was trying to get across that day. But in his case, the problem was that it wasn't the right message. With an unimaginative campaign, he wound up being marginalized - the one thing he absolutely needed to avoid.

C

HOWARD HAMPTON

Last Thursday I wrote that Howard Hampton appeared to be reaching the end of his rope. In the midst of a third straight futile campaign as NDP Leader, he had openly speculated to The Toronto Sun's editorial board on Wednesday that he might be "the wrong person" for the job. It was in keeping with his tone in the campaign's latter stages; when he'd visited our own editorial board at the start of the week, there was little pretense his party had much chance on election day.

The first, more minor mistake was the NDP's lack of preparedness for the start of the campaign. Rather than trying to set the agenda, Mr. Hampton waited several days before unveiling his platform. With the NDP needing a big splash to avoid becoming an afterthought, that marginalized them from the outset.

The bigger problem was that Mr. Hampton declined to make the one pitch that could have increased the NDP's support base. With polls showing the potential for a minority government, he should have openly campaigned for the balance of power - something Jack Layton, did in the last two federal elections. By outlining all the progressive things the NDP would force Dalton McGuinty to do, he could have won over enough left-leaning Liberals to increase his seat count.

NDP Leader Howard Hampton easily won his seat in Kenora-Rainy River, and said New Democrats made strong gains in the number of Ontarians who voted for the party.

"We increased our popular vote significantly tonight. And we're going to send more New Democrats to Queens Park and some of them are very youthful, and I look forward to the opportunity to work with them," he said.

And while Hampton had no problem being re-elected for the sixth time in his northern riding of Kenora-Rainy River, he now joins the other leaders whose parties lost with questions being asked about how much longer they should stay on.

After three campaigns as leader and without a breakthrough, some are wondering whether Hampton will want to lead the NDP through another campaign.

- Despite his efforts to raise "the real issues," Howard Hampton failed to make major gains in his third election as NDP Leader, but vowed to lead the party into the next one.

"I'm not going anywhere," he told a crowd of supporters to a huge round of applause last night at a hotel in Fort Frances, in his riding of Kenora-Rainy River. "I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can."

4. Despite the slander campaign launched by Liberal hacks; Cherniak and Kinsella last year, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo kept her seat.

5. The McGuinty and Williams landslides mean that the Harpocrite government is in serious trouble if they force an election. And now all eyes move west to see what the results in Saskatchewan will be. If the NDP play Williams card of bashing Ottawa and win, well that will be the final nail in Harpers attempt to force an election over his 'every vote is a confidence vote' Throne speech.

In his first news conference since gaining power 20 months ago, Harper delivered an ultimatum to Parliament. If the opposition parties support the throne speech, they have to support everything in it. All items will be confidence votes.

Sound familiar? That's because it is. University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan -- who is to Harper what Karl Rove was to U.S. President George W. Bush -- outlined the exact strategy in an article in the Globe and Mail Aug. 1 under the headline: It's time for Conservative minority brinksmanship.

"By using confidence measures more aggressively, the Conservatives can benefit politically," Flanagan wrote. "If the opposition parties retreat, the government gets its legislation. If the opposition unites on a matter of confidence, the Conservatives get an election for which they are best prepared."

Now here's Harper Oct. 3: "We must be able to govern... It's not a matter of making threats. They (the opposition) have got to fish or cut bait. The choice is not an election or obstruction, the choice is an election or give the government the mandate to govern.

"You can't pass the throne speech one day and the next day say, 'Well, I didn't mean to do it or we didn't actually give you a mandate,'" he continued. "We will be interpreting a positive vote on the speech from the throne as a mandate to consider the major elements of the throne speech and the major elements of the government's program to be matters of confidence going forward."

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Stelmach Dooms Tory

Farmer Ed steps into a political cow pie. He is going to show up in the big T.O. and announce the joys of rapacious capitalism in Alberta. Yep the hick from the sticks is showing up in the middle of the Ontario Provincial Election. Just the kinda help John Tory needs from his fellow Conservative.

Premier Ed Stelmach will travel to Toronto later this month to tout Alberta's contribution to the Canadian economy.

"I'll also leave a message about what we're doing with respect to the work we're doing on the environment," Stelmach said Wednesday.

The premier said he will attempt to drive home the message that Alberta's boom is Canada's boom, a theme he has told national audiences before.

Stelmach will spend Sept. 24 and 25 in the city and deliver a lunch-hour speech to the Empire Club on the 25th.

Bet this engagement gets postponed till a later date. Wagering may begin now.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach is being criticized from within his own ranks for agreeing to make a speech in Toronto during the Ontario election campaign.

A senior cabinet minister, who did not want to be identified, says there's no way the premier should make the Sept. 25 speech to the Empire Club, especially if it bashes Ontario.

"This is a mistake," said the minister as he left a three-day caucus planning session. "He shouldn't have agreed to deliver this speech."

But a Stelmach spokesman says the premier never hesitated to accept the speech when the invitation was extended by the Empire Club.

The Alberta Advantage will be John Tory's disadvantage.

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Ed Stelmach, Alberta Advantage,John Tory, Ontario, Ontario Conservative Party, Ontario Election,

Nuclear P3 Meltdown

Ah the joy of Private Public partnerships. The irony here is that the Bruce Plant is also owned by public pensions funds, private interests and the Power Workers Union. Originally mothballed by the Harris government, it was sold to a consortium of public private interests to pay for the expensive repairs Bruce needed to get it back online.

Robin Jeffrey’s determination created the opportunity that spawned Bruce Power and has led to a revitalization of nuclear power in Canada. The Bruce Power transaction received a Gold Award from the Canadian Council for Public Private Partnerships for “Excellence and Innovation in Infrastructure” and received the Financial Times Global Energy Award for “Successful Investment Decision of the Year” of 2001.

Local support wasn't a given for Hawthorne when he first came to the Bruce station, in 2000, as part of a team of experts imported by British Energy, a U.K. utility that leased the plant from the Ontario government that year. The 1970s-era station — which consists of eight Canadian-made Candu nuclear reactors — had languished and faltered under public-sector management. The provincial government had decided to see if private managers could do a better job running a major part of the nuclear fleet that supplies almost half of Ontario's electricity. To lure experienced nuclear managers to the province, Ontario's Conservative finance minister at the time, Jim Flaherty, offered British Energy a 17-year lease on terms critics considered too sweet for an asset the public borrowed billions to build.

Financial concerns involving its operations outside of Canada led British Energy PLC to withdraw from Bruce Power in 2003. As a result, the Cameco Corporation increased its share of Bruce Power to 31.6%, while new partners TransCanada PipeLines and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust (a trust owned by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System [OMERS]) each acquired a 31.6% share. The facility’s two primary unions retained their original 5.2% share.

With the McGuinty government promise to eliminate coal fired plants, Bruce coming back online at 'any cost' was a priority. And the cost was of course to the taxpayers of Ontario.

Ontarians would have saved $1.5 billion on their hydro bills over the next 25 years had the government negotiated a smarter deal to refurbish the Bruce Power nuclear station, the provincial auditor general says.

Electricity generated by refurbished reactors at a privately operated nuclear station will cost hydro consumers in Ontario 44 per cent more than the going market rate as a result of the government's failure to drive the best deal possible, the province's auditor says.

Auditor-General Jim McCarter said in a report released yesterday he recognizes that the province was not in a strong bargaining position when it cut the 2005 deal with Bruce Power, the privately owned consortium that operates the nuclear station on Lake Huron.

As a result, his report suggests, the government made too many financial concessions at the expense of electricity consumers.

The government will pay Bruce Power 7.1 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity produced from reactors the company plans to refurbish. This is significantly higher than the average market price of 4.9 cents consumers have paid over the past five years and experts' projections of future prices, the report says.

See:

nuclear power

Environment

Hydro

Energy Probe

CANDU

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McGuinty, electricityauditor general, Ontario hydronuclear, nuclear power, Ontario Power Workers Union, Bruce Nuclear Plant, Utilities, Bruce Power, Liberals, Conservatives, Government,

Halloween Election?

So much for Ontario's historic first "fixed" election date.
Premier Dalton McGuinty's government has switched the much-ballyhooed Oct. 4 provincial election to Oct. 10 because of a conflict with the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret. With the change, this year's election will fall on a Wednesday, instead of a Thursday, the traditional day for votes in Ontario. Democratic Renewal Minister Marie Bountrogianni said that's because Ontario's chief election officer, John Hollins, was concerned Oct. 11 might infringe on that week's Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. "The Jewish holiday pre-dates Dalton McGuinty's legislation. You think they would have figured this out from the beginning. This is incompetence."Hudak said, noting the holiday concern has been raised for two years.

Oh heck hold it on Halloween.

I am sure most pagans wouldn't mind, and besides it would be appropriate.

After all politicians are masters of disguising their true intentions.

And like ghosts and goblins they go door to door seeking to trick or treat.

And it is a celebration of ancestor worship and the dead, oh sorry that's the Senate.



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Ontario, election, McGuinty, religious holidays, fixed election date, Halloween, jewish, jewish holiday, Ramadan