Hmmm, seems that Doug Holyday, the Deputy Mayor, might be starting to see exactly why those unions fought for good pay year after year. Except that all those “lefty” concepts of wealth distribution to workers weren’t exactly what he took away from it.

Instead, Holyday is redistributing the money to already higher-earning management who have been responsible for cutting costs (i.e. other employees).

A few dozen senior managers would get annual increases of 2.75 per cent over the four years through 2015.

Altogether, the tab for those raises over four years comes to $30 million.

It’s also proposed that city council reinstate lump-sum bonuses for managers at the top of their salary range. The bonuses were cancelled in 2010 and 2011, which meant about 2,600 managers didn’t receive bonuses. As a result, the city saved about $11 million.

…

Holyday said the senior management has helped cut costs and trim the workforce, steps that were needed to put the city on a sounder financial footing.

So to all those labourers out there who thought that the Rob Ford gang weren’t into this sort of thing, that his cuts and slashes were simply fiscal responsibility intended to weed out greedy unions, I’m afraid you were mistaken. All that extra money, instead of being distributed to workers, is simply being given to those willing to toe the line for the Mayor. And now you can see that, although unions can be problematic, they go a long way to ensuring that the rich don’t simply get richer while the rest of us lose our jobs.

Seems Ford’s interaction with Star reporter Daniel Dale made an impression on Torontonians. But not in a good way. And especially not with the folks in his own riding.

The recent spat between the Mayor and Dale appears to have pushed his approval rating down by 14% from about 47% at around this time in April. That’s not saying much considering Ford has conspicuously scraped the bottom of the mayoral popularity barrel since he got into office, but it’s an additional indictment of a man who is not only abdicating the duties of his office but also seems hell-bent on destroying this city by invoking a constantly changing agenda that is only costing taxpayers more by the day.

Hopefully this is the beginning of the erosion of the Conservative power base in this country. Not that I think the Liberal option is necessarily much better, but it’d be a start.

There are still people out there who believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Stephen Harper and his greasy conservative cronies like Rob Ford are good for the economy — that they solve the economic messes left behind by their predecessors and, through tough budget cuts and austerity, will reverse the course of those freewheeling pinkos that left the holes under which we struggle.

Except it’s not true.

It’s not even close to true.

In fact, it’s the exact opposite of the truth — Harper and Ford directly caused the budgetary deficits they calculate today, either through deception or through massive amounts of irresponsible spending. Everything they accuse their opponents of doing is precisely what they themselves are doing. And they’re two-faced, deceptive assholes about it to boot.

In the case of Ford, his term started with a hefty $350 million surplus left over by David Miller. Oh, you didn’t know? Well, you wouldn’t if you bought into Ford’s lies and didn’t bother to read any news at the time. A year after taking office, Ford was running a $774 million deficit and blaming it on his predecessor. Ford’s administration has managed to cut the losses he created to yet another surplus totaling $90 million, and it’s expected to be about the same as that left by Miller when he left by the end of this year.

In other words, Ford’s “deficit” was a complete and utter lie he used to justify his ravenous cuts to city infrastructure and his attacks on unions and public services.

With the case of Harper, the situation is a bit worse. In the Prime Minister’s case, what started as a $12 billion surplus left over by a stingy Paul Martin has now been deflated to a $33.4 billion deficit last year. At present, that deficit is running at $23.5 billion and is expected to grow before year’s end. But just like Ford, Harper is using the crisis he created to cut jobs, services, and any semblance of what makes Canada great.

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: both Ford and Harper directly, willfully, and purposefully created economic crises in order to push through their destructive agendas on the Canadian population; everything from social programs to old age benefits to employment.

These so-called “leaders” are straight up criminal scammers who won’t rest until they’ve subjugated the populace to the whims of their corporate masters (no doubt they, like banker crony Tony Blair, will benefit from their collusion).

The mega-banks that, through fractional reserve banking, create money out of thin air (this is no exaggeration), to lend out to governments who play ball, which in turn tax citizens and subject them to austerity in order to pay back these made up loans. Did you know that that same money could’ve been borrowed from the Bank of Canada at 0% interest? Seems sensible, then, to borrow that cash from banks at a much higher rate of interest while giving them the legal authority to lend out money they don’t even have (how else do you lend out $1000 when you only have $50?).

Doesn’t it?

Yet this is precisely the program that both Harper and Ford subscribe to, at one level or another.

See, if you and I started lending out money we didn’t have and then expected to be paid back — with interest — we would be jailed for fraud. When the Prime Minister and his buddies do it, it’s represented by their scumbag compatriots as just the best thing for Canada since sliced bread. Oh, and by the way, the taxpayer will be responsible for all debts by the Canadian government. And if you don’t like you debt bondage, it’s off to jail for you!

What a sick sick joke.

Bill C-38 is Harper’s so-called “omnibus” budget bill because the government is trying to cram so much into it — some of it good, some of it neutral, much of it horrible. This comes on the heels of other legislative doozies like Bill C-10 (the omnibus crime bill), Bill C-11 (the copyright reform bill), and Bill C-30 (the “Lawful Access” bill). Are you starting to see an ongoing theme here?

Among the list of things that our Fascist-inspired leadership is trying to get passed are:

• Changes to Employment Insurance designed to push Canadians into debt and corporate servitude.
• An increase in the mandatory retirement age designed to ensure people give up more of their earnings to banks through taxes.
• Removal of already mostly non-existent CSIS oversight (this is the Canadian domestic spy agency).
• Giving U.S. law-enforcement agents, such as the FBI, the same powers as members of the RCMP during cross-border operations.
• Changes to environmental rules such as allowing the federal government to crack down on charities, including environmental groups, which advocate for better laws and policies; fast-tracking of big-corp projects through a weaker environmental review process; reduced protection for fish and fish habitats, exempting pipelines and power lines from the Navigable Waters Act and reduced protection for species at risk; laying off of over 600 Parks Canada workers; increased offshore drilling and on publicly-owned grasslands.

In response, a SOPA-like campaign is being waged called “BlackOutSpeakOut” in which some 13,000 websites are going dark to protest the ongoing scumbaggery of our federal government. Additionally, government opposition are doing everything in their power to slow down and kill this thing, or at least have it split up so that each part of the bill can be voted on independently instead of keeping the good parts in limbo because the bad parts have been glued to them in one giant bill.

Originally posted at: http://patrickbay.ca/blog/?p=3268

In a par for the course example of Conservative scumbaggery, Ted Opitz, MP for Etobicoke Centre (incidentally where staunch conservative Rob Ford lives), is trying to force the results of the last federal election to go his way by taking it to the Supreme Court (following George Bush’s example, no doubt).

When it turned out that the election was extremely close in that riding (26 votes, to be precise), Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj went to the Ontario Superior Court which ended up throwing out 79 votes because of “clerical errors” by Elections Canada staff.

When this type of thing happened in the past, by-elections were called because none of the rulings were subsequently appealed. In this case, however, Opitz has been dragging the process out for over a year and, despite the ruling by the Superior Court, he continues to sit and vote in the House of Commons.

Seems pretty simple; if Opitz is so damn sure he won, it shouldn’t be a problem to put that certainty to the test with a by-election. Instead, he wants judges to simply appoint him to office and, despite current legal rulings, continues to exercise his illegitimate power over the people of Canada.

That’s the Conservatives for ya!