Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (title ripped from Al Franken)

Hideous orange text comes verbatim from the latest PC Party of Ontario ad, which you can watch (if you want to hear a bunch of nonsense) here [edit: the ad has since been removed].

"Most politicians tell you what they think you wanna hear"

Yeah, and here it comes...

"I could do the same"

You are.

"I could tell you that our debt is nothing to worry about-"

It actually isn't, so I guess point for you. Oh no, wait, you're being facetious.

"-and, we can spend more forever."

Well, even a five year old knows that isn't true. Also, pretty sure that's not the message of the other two big parties. But whatevs. GO ON . . .

"I could tell you that if we do nothing, the jobs we've lost will just come back on their own."

Oh, Tim—we're not all morons, that's not the message the other two big parties have been sending out either. Why you wanna play me like a sucka?

"Or I could be honest with you"

Well, you haven't been so far, so I'm not expecting much.

"The truth is that a million people woke up in our province this morning ... without a job."

ACTUALLY, Tim, the truth is that 364,700 people in the labour force aged 25 and over woke up in this province this morning without a job. Or, if you want to talk about those 15 and over, then 583,100 of those in the labour force. That's hardly a million. Or can't you count?

Ok, whatever. Give it to me straight, Tim.

"The truth is that we're spending $1.5M, every hour, that we just don't have."

Well, I don't know what to say about that, besides the weird pause after 'the truth'. I'd like to think it's because when you're about to tell a lie, you hesitate a little after you say 'truth'.

Well, maybe you could get the Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group), the Bank of Nova Scotia, the 407 ETR, Barrick Gold, CIBC, CN Rail, Canadian Tire ... through Vale Canada Limited—who donated a total of more than $780,000 to your bloody party instead of paying fair corporate taxes—to help with that debt problem. Yeah, many of them donated to OTHER parties as well, so double or triple that figure and you get the amount of money that large corporations pay to have us HARASSED by political ads. Thanks a lot, jerks.

By the way, that's donations to the party in 2014 alone. 2014 isn't even half done yet.

For more super fun campaign and party donation information, visit:
http://rtd.elections.on.ca/rtd/jsp/en/RTDParty.jsp#

Aw shit, now I have to look at the campaign donations. Whoa, and that's another $185k. Fun stuff.

But I digress. Where are you going with this, Tim?

"The truth is that we have 100,000 more bureaucrats than we did in two thousand and nine, but our hospitals are even MORE overcrowded."

I had to write that 2000 and 9 out, it's a pet peeve. I was always taught you only use 'and' when you're denoting what comes after a decimal place. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's two thousand nine.

Hmm. Well, let's dissect this. our population is 4% greater than it was in 2009, at a 2013 figure of 13,537,994.

This is a contentious issue. I'm a public sector worker, so I'm understandably worried about this statement—partly because I have had about a decade of trouble securing a job in this field, which supports the public by providing information and services, but also partly because I think Tim Hudak might have been dropped on his head as a baby.

Ontario does NOT EVEN HAVE 100,000 bureaucrats, TOTAL. At last count available from Statistics Canada, we have just under 88,000 provincial government workers (CANSIM table 183-0002, and thanks to Donovan Vincent of The Star for posting this link in THIS ARTICLE he wrote in late May). In fact, if you want to compare the 2009 figures to the 2012 figures, you totes can.

ONTARIO ACTUALLY HAS FEWER PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS AT LAST COUNT THAN IT DID IN 2009. Nearly 2% fewer, in fact.

If you want to focus on the TOTAL number of public sector employees (including non-bureaucrats) then you'll see that the increase in jobs is LESS THAN ONE PERCENT. The population has grown by 4%, and the number of people providing services to that population has grown by less than one percent. 

And for interest's sake, because you brought up hospitals, Tim, let's see how many people work in health and social services. Oh, look, it's gone up by 3%, nearly keeping pace with the population growth.

Back to your blather.

"The truth" [insert ridiculous paternalistic pause] "is that without a realistic plan" [OMGWTFLOL] "that puts your interests first" [I'm pretty sure you should be replacing your with business here, Mike . . . I mean, Tim] "none of this is gonna change."

Hmm . . . "Gonna"—that's folksy.

"Our million jobs plan will take urgent action to grow the economy-"

The economy has grown, Timmy Tim Tim. It's just that folks like you and me—no, folks like me and the rest of the 99% (definitely excluding you)—DO NOT SEE THE BENEFITS. Here, lemme 'splain: the expenditure-based GDP for Ontario grew by about 36% from 2000 to 2011, from 513 billion dollars to 611 billion dollars (2007 chained dollars). That's from CANSIM Table 384-0038, by the way, in case you feel intrepid. Per capita, that's about from $44,708 to $45,600, or 2% growth.

Compare that to average income in Ontario from 2000 to 2011. In 2011 constant dollars, Average income in 2000 was $39,300, while in 2011 it was $39,600 (CANSIM Table 202-0402). That's an increase of less than 1%. So, per capita GDP—what we typically use to measure our economic activity—has gone up more than twice the rate of the average income. I reject your hypothesis that trickle-down-economics works. [EDIT: I initially had final consumption expenditure data in the place of GDP at market prices (looking at the wrong column), so the GDP increase claim was inflated. I've since corrected it, but it remains double the rate of income gains in the same period.]

"-we'll cut out the waste-"

WHAT WASTE? Oh, right, Gas Plant. That's something YOU WOULD HAVE DONE TOO, by the by, and the problem wasn't the party in power, it was the fact that politicians let NIMBY-spouting voters dictate where we locate power plants. You even campaigned on cancelling the Mississauga gas plant in the 2011 election. How soon we forget.

"-and improve public services, for you."

1) I think you mean "for business" again, and 2) how the hell are you gonna improve public services when you're ready to fire more than 100% of the people who deliver them?

"Together, we can get Ontario. Working. Better."

That's not a sentence. Who taught you English?

Tim Hudak vows to cut 100,000 public sector jobs if elected

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/hudak-vows-to-cut-100000-public-sector-jobs-if-tories-win/article18580284/#dashboard/follows/

So that million jobs plan is either a 1.1 million gross jobs plan or a 900,000 net jobs plan.

What an idiot.

A Bitter Grind...

No posts here since last year. Discussion amongst the instigators has shown consensus that this state of affairs is not acceptable. Work is beginning again on these pages, even as we speak!

Our apologies for the shocking lack of content. More soon.

Further Narrow-mindedness

Today, from John Geddes:

The Liberal leader spoke of sympathy for victims and concern about underlying causes, as is proper, but failed to express a leader’s necessary outrage and convey a sense of how justice must be done. The Prime Minister was far better on outrage and justice, but conveniently blurred crucial distinctions about those other possible reactions.

Okay, so why is it necessary for a leader to express outrage? Why not sadness, why not disappointment? Why must it be 'outrage?' Also, is it important for them to express outrage if they don't feel outrage? What if they feel saddened, should they act outraged? Do we want a leader who will insincerely monkey an emotion to satisfy the will of the idiot masses?

How one-dimensional we all are these days.

Rationalizing the Boston Bombings

One of the big non-story stories of the last 24 hours is that Justin Trudeau is 'rationalizing' the Boston bombings. This is a non-story story because it's a talking point propaganda-machine story being vomited forth by the CONservatives, and it's being rather stupidly handled by the Liberal Party.

Dominic Leblanc, on Power & Politics, tried to say that Mr. Trudeau wasn't rationalizing the bombings, and that Trudeau would punish the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law. He then went on to say that Mr. Trudeau said that we should be removing these people who are most marginalized and who are would-be crime perpetrators from society.

The talking point is idiotic, the refutation is idiotic.

Essentially, Mr. Trudeau was pointing out, much like Prime Minister Chrétien did before him (with respect to the 9/11 attacks) that some people feel marginalized and we should seek to find out what the motivations are to people's behaviour. Isn't an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure? Truly, this should speak to the current government's professed fiscal austerity position. Wouldn't there be potential cost savings to be found in preventing people from feeling so marginalized by society that they commit truly horrifying crimes? And wouldn't there be cost savings in not having lost lives, hospital costs, and incarceration costs associated with the aftermath of these crimes?

The talking points of the Liberal Party should not include statements like the one that Mr. LeBlanc made about removing marginalized people from society. The discourse should be moving towards REDUCING marginalization and developing community cohesion, such that more people feel involved, respected, and a part of their communities and country. The response shouldn't be 'You're right, Mr. Trudeau should have said he condemned the bombings outright, and he did say that, and you just didn't give him enough opportunity to make his words fully understood.' The response should be 'You're wrong. The right move isn't to condemn outright what you don't understand. That's how religious extremists and insane tyrants operate. The right move is to try to understand why bad things happen and make positive changes so that they don't happen again.'

Government as a Psychopath

Our government is laying off a reported 8% of its civil servants, nearly twice the 4.5% originally announced. At the same time,the new legislation rendering Employment Insurance criteria more stringent and reducing EI entitlements is in effect.

Instead of job creation, we have job destruction.

Instead of a social safety net, we have a truly 'insurance-industry' EI system, i.e., a system under mob rule.

Math Is A Language Of Its Own...

Hands up if you've heard that before; "Math is a language." Yeah? Tell me; how do you say "fuck off, already" in Math? How about "It was me. I knocked the milk over in the fridge and made that mess. I'm sorry." Has anybody written an Actual love poem in math - and I am Not talking about cheesy symbol constructs that represent a little sideways heart.

I'm not saying such things can't be expressed in mathematical terms, but after 4+ decades of hearing about math being a language, nobody yet has ever tried speaking it within earshot of me. Little wonder why, too. Strictly speaking, mathematics does fit the definition of language. It's a pretty loose definition, though.

The bigger mystery by far is why does math, or moreover those who study, use and seek to promote math, feel the need to associate it to language? Is this some kind of weird, sick, desperate attempt to legitimize math? How does one come to the opinion it needs to be legitimized? Math does plenty enough as it is without having to be "qualified" by the title of "a language." Like that's so special. We have 4,000+ of those lying around and that's just the human ones!

Anyways, I'm pro-math. I'm pro-language. What I'm not is pro-tentious. Seriously, math folk, if there is a point to re-iterating that math is a damn language, please Make It. But deep down, we know there isn't. It's just one of those things that you occasionally say to sound kind of deep and perhaps a little introspective.