(this all sounds a little familiar…)

Last July I wrote a post about Doug Ford’s assumption of dictatorial powers in the province of Ontario, “because Covid”. I noted that the powers granted under the “Reopening Ontario Act”, which Dougie clearly and obviously demonstrated he wasn’t willing to abuse, were set to expire at the end of 2021. I recall that my reaction at the time was something along the lines of, “yeah … sure.”

A few short months later it was revealed that – SHOCK! AMAZEMENT! – the non-emergency-emergency powers that the government magically granted itself will be extended until March 28 of this year, “because Covid.”

Should we be worried about a literal dictatorship that has repeatedly put people out of work, shut down the economy, driven families and large chunks of society apart, filled people with dread while making their lives miserable, maybe even had a hand in killing a few of them?

Of course not! The real and proven threat to “democracy” is … truckers!

Are you scared yet? You should be!

As of yesterday (I believe, but today certainly), the majority of beds occupied by Covid patients in Ontario ICUs were those of fully vaccinated individuals. The numbers are plain as day:

It was not so long ago it was being trumpeted that those selfish, disgusting, unvaccinated heathen were plugging up hospitals and possibly costing people their lives.

Looking at the graphs above, it’s clear that the sheer number of people in hospitals with Covid has ballooned so if they were already having problems in the fall of 2021, imagine the kinds of problems they must be having now. And all because of those damned fully vaccinated people clogging up the healthcare system! Lock ’em all up! Make ’em pay!

I kid, of course. Mostly.

I’m sure someone can still conjure up a “what if…” scenario using ratios and proportional comparisons to calculate how likely an unvaccinated person is to be admitted to the ICU compared to a fully vaccinated individual, and imagine if all the unvaccinated people suddenly needed to go to the hospital! …but these models and projections clearly aren’t in line with the reality: it’s the fully vaccinated who are putting an undue “burden” on the healthcare system, both in the ICU and in hospitalizations in general.

I use quotes around the word “burden” because I’m not certain how large a share of beds Covid patients take up overall, but if we assume a conservative estimate of roughly 21,000 then all Covid patients presently occupy roughly 1.3% of the total bed capacity.

Maybe it’s not a capacity problem but a staffing problem. I don’t know what the broader solution is but maybe the city and province can start by not demanding the firing of perfectly healthy, capable people? Just a suggestion.

With fully vaccinated individuals occupying nearly three times as many hospital beds as unvaccinated patients, and now that most patients in ICU are fully vaccinated, I wonder if the nightly news will do an expose on the “pandemic of the fully vaccinated” while bemoaning how these scoundrels are taking up needed beds and preventing potentially life-saving surgeries.

Yeah, not gonna hold my breath. More likely we’ll be hearing more about those foul, filthy, diseased, degenerate children next.

Recently, Emily Viegas, a 13-year-old Brampton girl died of Covid. I’m sure you can find more information than I’ve included but here’s a link just in case.

Basically, the story is that the vaccinated father (an essential worker, as if that was somehow relevant), was staying home with the girl to take care of her as both the mother and her brother had also come down with Covid. Seems the dad didn’t want to take Emily to the hospital because he didn’t want to overburden the healthcare system, something the media have been screaming about lately.

In many ways, this would’ve been just another sad story of a Covid victim except certain reprehensible fucks just couldn’t even keep their political agendas in their pants long enough to let Emily’s body grow cold before pushing them; sick assholes like Andrew Boozary, so-called “Doctor”, who proudly advertises that the doctor’s primary task is to be political (not saving lives or reducing suffering), and who was immediately on television when Emily died — the same television warning of hospitals being “on the brink”, a warning that Emily’s father clearly took to heart — while doing his best “human sadness” impression in order to push through his agenda of provincial paid sick days. Oh yeah, and systemic racism … of course.

Because sick days would’ve prevented Emily’s death how, exactly? Maybe by allowing the father to stay home to take care of her? Oh wait … he did. Maybe the mother could’ve stayed at home? Oh wait … she was in the hospital with Covid. Well, obviously the solution is sick days legislation. Logic! Science!

Naturally, Doug Ford caved and now Emily’s father can rest easy knowing that nothing would be different today had this legislation been passed earlier.

I personally don’t have a horse in the sick days race but it’s obvious that Emily’s death was immediately, coldly, disgustingly scooped up by people like Boozary (not the only one, I should mention), in order to push through a political agenda that had absolutely nothing to do with her death.

The fact that people like Boozary are idolized and applauded for their inhuman callousness is a stark reflection of the horrible dregs of humanity that have been slavishly published and worshipped since the start of Covid. People like Boozary are sociopathic monsters, pushing politics and hateful ignorant racism based on abject lies (many examples here on TCL), supported by media networks that are in many ways directly responsible for Emily’s death by frightening her father into avoiding the hospital (of course Boozary made no mention of this obvious fact). And they’re working hand in hand to keep you “informed”.

Why don’t people trust the media, politicians, and increasingly the medical community? Big mystery.

So it’s been about a week since our betters passed a municipal bylaw requiring the imposition of mandatory indoor masks pretty much everywhere except schools and daycare, transportation (noting that the TTC has its own bylaws), medical facilities, and residential buildings.

There are some neat specifics for businesses, like bars, which can legally allow patrons indoors:

*The bylaw allows for temporary removal of a mask or face covering when receiving services (such as having a meal) or while actively engaging in an athletic or fitness activity.

How thoughtful! You’re allowed to temporarily lift your mask to shove a fry in your mouth or down a few gulps of lager.

The implied stupidity makes it really hard to take it seriously. And I suspect this is why many people doubt government so-called experts and advisors. After all, this is the same caliber of people who brought us things like the smoking bylaw that penalizes business owners if they fail to police a 9 meter (29.5 feet) radius in front of their premises, a distance that often extends well into the street if not all the way across.

I haven’t heard of anyone being rounded up into cattle cars yet so for me the mask bylaw has so far been only a mild irritant. And there are loopholes in it that are big enough to drive a truck through. Nevertheless, I sympathize with the people who see this as a slippery slope.

Developments like the increasingly indefinite emergency measures being introduced by Doug Ford’s lackeys, when compared with something like the 9/11 anti-terror laws that over the years have never really abated, tend to produce some very plausible conclusions even if those conclusions haven’t yet been borne out.

When Doug Ford claims it’s not a power grab are we to assume he’s being honest? The oxymoron doth run deep there.

So is it so surprising when we find people resisting increasingly dictatorial demands by the state even as that same state tells us that Covid infections are way down “but we have to be ready for the next wave”? Sounds an awful lot like arbitrary, indefinite lockdowns and a complete stripping of people’s rights in the name of “public health measures“.

On top of that, it seems that in their frenzied efforts to impose their controls, governments may actually be openly violating the laws of their masters, something I realized while observing an interaction at a bank between a woman refusing to wear a mask and a front-door security officer refusing her access (to her own money).

The woman was showing the rent-a-cop the bylaw and claiming she had an illness, therefore couldn’t wear a mask. The diminutive female guard asked the woman what kind of illness she had and even after she was told it was asthma there was a lot of hemming and hawing.

At first I thought, how shitty of the government to make the businesses and ultimately their employees responsible for facing people’s wrath in increasingly tense times. Besides, I doubt most of these Covid bouncers have any training in determining which illnesses may or may not qualify so putting the onus on them to make safety decisions seems quite reckless.

Moreover, aren’t there provincial health privacy laws that specifically prevent random people demanding answers to exactly these types of questions? Aren’t business owners opening themselves up to lawsuits if they follow the city bylaw? Or do municipal laws supersede provincial legislation now?

Maybe until they get their act together we should #defundthestate

In Ontario, not a single worker is protected from wrongful dismissal under the Employment Standards Act.

http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1371468/ontario-allowing-employers-to-fire-workers-without-cause/

“Can you believe those teachers?! Some of them are making more than one-hundred thousand dollars a year! What criminals!”

Those are the words that a family member blurted out a couple of weeks ago, perhaps in an attempt to bait me, but in any event completely unexpectedly and forcefully.

“What do you mean?”, I asked.

She went on determined to teach me what criminal scum schoolteachers and their unions are, asking me repeatedly if I’d read Bill 115 (her own interpretation coming from a newspaper), and demanding that I answer her on the spot.

“Do they start off making that much?”, I asked incredulously.

“No, they start at forty-thousand, but because of the union they’re guaranteed a pay increase of two percent every two years!”

She was steamrolling over the entire conversation at the time so I didn’t get a chance to do the math, but I did know that historically the rate of inflation was 2% so such a measure would simply keep teachers from slipping into poverty.

My interlocutor wasn’t having such arguments. “No one else gets pay increases, why should they!”

“So you’re complaining that because everyone in the private sector’s getting screwed, people who have the ability to be represented and demand better pay should be fired?”, I retorted, having heard such nonsense many times in the past.

“That’s not true!”, she replied. “These people take tax money, your money and my money, and they’re getting ridiculous salaries. Everyone else is paying for them!”

At this point I wish I’d had the opportunity to do some basic math for her since she clearly hadn’t done it herself, but she was complaining that teachers, having come out of school with thousands in debt, would be paid roughly $19 an hour (increased by an astronomical $0.38 per hour every two years or so).

“How much did dad make?”, I followed up, thinking back to my father who worked for the city and who retired after a couple of decades making considerably more. I wasn’t even going to bring up the fact that teachers are taxpayers too — that old Fordite mentality.

“Well, more, obviously,” she replied,” but he was doing a real job. All these people do is babysit children.”

I’d spent some time teaching kids too. She hadn’t even come near a school for anything more than parents’ night. So of course she demanded that this is exactly what goes on in the classroom, that I’m completely wrong (and ignorant, just for good measure), they’re all completely wrong, and we’re all getting royally ripped off by the teachers and the unions. (She also loves Ford and Harper, if that helps to explain things).

After an hour of back-and-forth, we finally managed to reach the consensus that those responsible are mostly in government, unions can be a good thing (which took many recounting of my own experiences with private industry abuses), and that maybe people could be paid a wage that allows them to both live and pay off their debts (though this took a lot — Conservatives abhor this idea and expend a lot of effort in quashing it).

When I finally hung up I got to thinking whether or not the teachers would even be launching an illegal strike to meet their demands, so deemed by Premiere McGuinty and the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Then I remembered this little gem from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (right near the top):

Fundamental Freedoms

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

• (a) freedom of conscience and religion;
• (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
• (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
• (d) freedom of association.

So according to the highest law of the land, expressing your demands, peacefully assembling, etc. — basically everything a strike is about — are FULLY PROTECTED UNDER LAW.

The really sad thing is that no newspaper anywhere in the province has bothered to bring up the fact that the tyrannical government of Ontario, along with the OLRB, are the ones acting illegally. They are ignoring federal laws and instead simply saying  that they’re going to take these incredibly unlawful actions. And then to impose a contract on the teachers while telling them to get back to work — what the fuck is that?

And if you speak out about something so blatantly obvious, something so simple that a child can see it, you’re branded a conspiracy kook who should be spending time in solitary confinement with a tin foil hat.

Certainly that’s the high horse on which my family member rode in on – summarily dismissing such obvious signs of a tyrannical dictatorship because, clearly, people in positions of power have NEVER abused it, and because a “newspaper” sporting half naked women, ads for hookers, and more advertising and pictures than words, told her that’s how things are.

Perhaps the most bizarre takeaway from the conversation was my family member’s insistence that I need to read Bill 115 because it’s so gloriously correct, but all of the plethora of documents by and from the government, on their website, showing their criminality, malfeasance, and generally nefarious and outright evil plans for the future, are all blatant lies and complete fabrications.

In other words, Bill 115 must be true because it agrees with what she was told, and all of the other documents are a straight up lie because they’re just too unpleasant. You know — if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist — kind of thing.

I remember asking my family member how she thought all of the other evil governments of the past and present managed to take a hold. After all, it’s a safe bet to say that most citizens would not choose to live under such conditions.

I was met with a deafening silence.

“Yeah,” I replied, “that’s exactly how it happens.”

I know I’ve spent a lot of time pissing on the Conservatives and Harper, but it’s become exceedingly obvious that the Liberals are just more of the same, the same broken system of bipartisanship designed to keep us all arguing on the ground instead of looking at the houses of power and seeing the truth of the corruption and lies being peddled there.

I say this because of Dalton McGuinty’s latest revelation that his budget, which he wants the NDP to guarantee in writing to vote for, includes a section that would privatize ServiceOntario. In case you’re wondering what this agency does, here’s a quick rundown of everything that would fall into private hands:

• Driver’s licenses, plates, and stickers
• Birth certificates and newborn registrations
• Death certificates
• Marriage certificates
• Business licenses
• Personal property liens
• Hunting and fishing licenses
• Government address registrations

All this even as, in the same budget, McGuinty’s government boasts about how they’ve saved $1.5 billion last year. So how do they justify it? With the claim that Canada is poor because of the 2009 recession, and we need to cut cut cut! This is probably thanks to Harper (may I have a second helping, sir?), even though the Liberal’s own website strongly suggests this is not the case.

In any event, the Libs are holding up the construction and almost immediate sale of highway 407 as the type of resounding success that privatization can bring. I’m sure anyone who takes the 407 is familiar with just how amazing it is to be under the yoke of a private agency that can revoke your driving privileges. And wasn’t it the Libs who took the 407 to court to try to break that contract? And, what a wonderful example to hold up anyways…the fact that it cost over $100 billion to build, land acquisitions and all, and was sold for just over $3 billion for a quick $1.5 billion “profit” for the Conservatives that wasn’t really a profit at all.

Look, I get it, all of you who have been calling these people “Fiberals” have, I admit, been far too kind about your monickers, but just don’t delude yourselves that by being on the other side (ergo the Conservatives), is any better. The government at all levels (I’m sure I’ve mentioned my municipal government more than once), seems hell bent on robbing citizens blind for the benefit of the banks. A global deficit, after all, is impossible if the same money lent out is what’s owed — that’s just elementary logic. The only way that the whole world can owe an approximate $200 trillion is if someone either stole that amount, or loaned it out fraudulently (they never had it to begin with), and is now expecting payback. And I dunno know about you, but the government only ever takes my money, never gives me any, so I sure as hell wasn’t on the receiving end of any such “loan”.

The fact that politicians are all mentioning that the “new” deficit is going to come from Europe where it was caused by banks lending out money they didn’t have (with much help by Government laws and regulations), and then expecting payback for cash literally created out of thin air (look up “fractional reserve banking” if you need an explanation), indicates a strong collusion, probably even big kickbacks (but how would we know? The banks control the money supply!) Besides, haven’t governments been handing over taxpayer money to the banks by the billions to solve this “problem”? How’s that been working out?

So doesn’t it just make perfect sense to go in exactly this direction more and more? Then, when we can’t pay our “debts” anymore, the banks can just privatize everything and then get ready for some genuine old-school slavery (or feudalism if you like, and if we’re lucky). And the government can be expected to back them all the way.

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!

http://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2012/02/statement-from-minister-bob-chiarelli-on-public-transit-in-toronto.html