Is community policing an important tool to reduce violence?

Some children from Community Housing Unit 10 - Spadina/Downtown went on a trip to the Metro Toronto Zoo organized by Toronto Police Services 52 Division as part of their ProAction Cops and Kids program!

                 (dear readers, I have provided the following article, word for word by Patty Winsa and Jim Rankinare, TorStar staff reporters to highlight the wide gulf between those who agree that community policing is 'an important tool intended to reduce the violence that has victimized blacks and Hispanics in their communities', according to New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and......those who don't. I'm sure that some locally and their brethren in NY and London will be following the decision of our Police Board very closely!)

Police Service Board decision on ‘carding’ stuns activists!

April 14, 2012

Patty Winsa and Jim Rankin,

Monitor the controversial police practice of stopping citizens on the street, particularly minority youth, and “carding” them. Make officers give a copy of the gathered information to those they stop. Open police data for review by the city’s auditor general.

That’s what the Toronto Police Services Board is ordering, stunning even the activists who fought for more oversight of carding, which sees hundreds of thousands of people stopped, questioned and documented each year.

The Toronto board’s decision, made earlier this month, is “pretty amazing,” says former mayor John Sewell, a member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, a group of concerned citizens who led the drumbeat for change.

Toronto police defend the practice as good police work in high crime areas. But a Star investigation found that police stop and document minorities at much higher rates across the city. And only a small percentage of the people in their massive electronic database have been arrested or charged in Toronto in the past decade.

The practice is also a front-page debate in New York and London.

Police stops have been under scrutiny in all three cities. But the type of oversight that may limit the practice can only be found here, thanks to the ruling.

The motions that passed included a request that police chief Bill Blair report carding statistics every three months, as well as monitor and address discriminatory practices.

In addition, officers will be required to give copies of the document card — stating the reason for the stop — to each individual.

The board also unanimously approved chair Alok Mukherjee’s call for the city’s auditor general to conduct an independent review of the race-based statistics kept by police, who record skin colour — black, brown, white or “other” — each time they stop and document a resident. The review would create a benchmark to judge the effectiveness of carding.

The service, and the police board that oversees it, haven’t always been as receptive to the suggestion that some police practices may target minorities.

In 2003, Toronto Police Association launched an unsuccessful $2.7-billion class-action libel suit against the Star after it published data that suggested a pattern of racial profiling.

The data showed blacks were more likely than whites to be detained and held for a bail hearing on a charge of simple drug possession. And that more were ticketed for offenses that would only come to light following a traffic stop. Civil libertarians and criminologists said it was a pattern of racial profiling, whether conscious or not.

In the Star’s latest analysis, blacks were more likely than whites to be stopped and documented in each of the city’s 72 patrol zones. The ratios for black youth were even higher.

So, as Sewell sat in the darkened police board room earlier this month along with a chorus of groups — the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the Black Action Defense Committee — all calling for an investigation into carding, he still couldn’t believe much was going to happen.
The board vice-chair, Councillor Michael Thompson, said afterward that many people in the room felt the same way, telling him later, “Oh my God. You guys actually did something. We didn’t think anything was going to happen.”

But the councillor said it was time to draw a line in the sand. “I read the (Star) series years ago. And I read the series again,” he said, referring to “Known to police”, which ran in March. “I know 10 years ago how controversial it was.”

“At the end of the day the police board is there to act on behalf of the citizens. And to implement measures to help make sure policing is safe for everyone,” said Thompson. Simply “referring the matter back to the auditor general with a report wasn’t sufficient.”

Many of the groups at the board meeting didn’t need the Star series to alert them to a frustrating imbalance between minority youth and police. They included front-line youth workers who had heard the stories before.

“Sadly, the results described in the Toronto Star series come as no surprise,” said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is facilitating a project on youth rights and policing.

Sewell’s recommendations were also supported by the provincial advocate Irwin Elman, who wrote in an email that young people have “highlighted the need for better relationships with community members, including Toronto police” since he took office in 2008.

Chief Blair has never defended racial profiling, calling it “abhorrent.” But he has supported carding, stressing that police target violent-crime areas of the city and that it has worked to reduce crime.

New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has also called his force’s “stop and frisk” practice an “important policing tool intended to reduce the violence that has victimized blacks and Hispanics,” according to a New York Times article in March. Statistics show 96 per cent of the city’s shooting victims and 90 per cent of murder victims in 2011 were minorities.

Police continue to “stop and search” there in record numbers, despite legislative changes made two years ago, when anger against the practice boiled over.

“People were pretty outraged that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were all of sudden in a police department database,” says Darius Charney, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has monitored the police data for nine years.

Police are now prohibited from maintaining an electronic file of names unless the stop ends in an arrest. But Charney says police interpreted the legislation as a limit only to maintaining electronic files and police still fill out the forms and keep paper copies. “Somewhere in the police department are a huge stack of handwritten forms,” he says.

Despite the legislation, statistics show police stopped nearly 700,000 people in 2011, 85 per cent of whom were black or Hispanic. Only 1 per cent of the stops led to recovery of a weapon and only one in 10 to an arrest or summons.

Charney’s non-profit organization is part of a class-action lawsuit against the police department, alleging the stop and frisk practice violates the U.S. Constitution’s fourth amendment, which prohibits search and seizure.

New York senators and city councillors, who say they’ve been stereotyped by police, are also trying to bring in legislation that would limit the practice.

In England, police “stop and search” powers used to uncover weapons or crime are also “hugely disproportionate. And yet also hugely ineffective,” says Rebekah Delsol, a member of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which studies ethnic profiling worldwide.

A leaked Scotland Yard memo made news when it revealed that police thought a federal “stop and search” power that disproportionately targets blacks could be toppled by a court challenge.

Section 60, as it’s called, allows police to intensively search areas in response to knife crimes. But “nationally, black people are more than 30 times likely to be stopped under Section 60 powers and Asian people are seven times more likely to be stopped,” says Delsol. “Only 2 per cent of those stops actually lead to an arrest. And it’s something like 0.5 of those for possession of a weapon, which is the ostensible reason for the power in the first place.”

Activists are calling for the kind of oversight that was introduced in Toronto. “There needs to be much tighter internal management that actually takes action on officer practice and does something about the culture of institutional racism,” says Delsol, whose organization is part of a court challenge to the Section 60 powers.

“And on the other side, I think there’s a lot of work to be done on using the statistics in a very clever way and working with communities so that they can really monitor the police and hold them to account.”

                                       -30-

                                      

Is this the end for those who, without shame wasted our tax dollars?

 

 

Funding cuts could unshackle Canadian civil society!

April 14, 2012
Howard Ramos and James Ron,
as published in the Toronto Star....... 

The 2012 federal budget has put Canada’s social justice groups on notice: the era of government-supported good deeds is over. Over the short term, many state-funded groups will shrink or disappear, while those that survive will lose their autonomy. If you care about critical thinking and social justice, this is bad news.

Over the long term, however, the Conservatives may have done Canada a favour. Deprived of federal funding, independently-minded activists will have to learn new ways of ethically raising money from individuals, communities, and businesses.

By multiplying their revenue sources, social justice groups will reduce their vulnerability to single-source arm-twisting. By going private, they will no longer have to worry about offending government ministers.
This new, American-style approach to promoting social justice could be a good thing. Canadian activists have long relied on federal money, and this has rendered them acutely vulnerable to official pressure.
Early on, the federal government’s intentions were pure. In the 1970s, Canada was suffering economically, and politicians hoped to dampen unrest by funding progressive civic groups. Keen to make the world a better place, they also supported organizations engaged in cutting-edge international thinking.
On the home front, these groups included indigenous rights bodies such as the Native Council of Canada (now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples), or women’s groups such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). To advance justice abroad, they included the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), an innovative, independently-minded Canadian Crown corporation with a multinational governing board.

Until recently, federal support for these and other groups distinguished Canada from its southern neighbour, where critically oriented social justice is privately funded. Under the old rules, Canadian groups were able to maintain their autonomy while taking federal money.

The generous notion underlying this remarkable approach was that a vociferous Canadian social justice sector was a public good worth supporting, irrespective of policy disagreements.

The problem, of course, was that this system created structural dependency. Canadian social justice groups attracted staff who knew how to secure government aid, but who had little ability to raise money from private individuals, communities and businesses.

This weakness became glaringly apparent when Harper’s Conservatives signalled their distaste for the old rules. If his government was going to pay, criticism would not be tolerated.

Harper began by cutting funding to domestic social justice programs such as Status of Women, a federal agency charged with issues of gender equity, and the Court Challenges Program, which had helped aggrieved groups seek legal redress.

Then, the Conservatives began slashing support to internationally oriented groups, such as the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, an independent policy group, and to KAIROS, a faith-based development organization.

More insidiously, officials let it be known that any organization still getting federal money must fall in line. With few safeguards to protect their independence, no state-supported entity was safe.

Understandably, many organizations scrambled to curry favour. At the Ottawa-based IDRC, for example, a jittery board of governors installed a government official as their new director, hoping he would keep the Conservatives happy. That official did his best, slashing programs and projects that might attract Conservative ire, and browbeating his staff into quiescence.

Things worked out similarly at Rights & Democracy, the Montreal-based Crown corporation that supported progressive groups abroad. There, Conservative-installed board members forced the organization’s directors to change course.

The same held true at the North-South Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank, where another new director has proved reluctant to publish findings critical of Canadian businesses and government.

Some groups are limping along in the new environment, while others have expired. The government has just eliminated Rights & Democracy, for example, while at the IDRC and North-South, staff have resigned, been removed, or are searching for new jobs.

And you have only to try and access the NAC’s former website to see how this once proud Canadian women’s group has fared; visitors are redirected to another website offering the domain name for sale.
Other restrictive moves are in the offing. The 2012 budget, for example, introduced new penalties for charities devoting more than 10 per cent of their money to “political advocacy,” meaning that charities supporting Greenpeace could face legal sanction.

Environmental groups seem to have attracted particular government ire. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, for example, recently attacked Tides Canada, a Vancouver based charity, for its opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline.

In other cases, officials have labelled civic groups unpatriotic. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, for example, attacked activists defending migrant workers as “anti-Canadian extremists.”
Harper’s crackdown has attracted substantial media attention, but few Canadian voters care. After all, many cutbacks were publicized long before the Conservatives’ 2011 electoral victory, and 80 per cent of polled Canadians have just voiced support for new restrictions on charities’ political activities.

The writing is on the wall for Canadians still interested in independently-minded social justice: develop new, non-federal sources of funding, or face defeat.

Over the past decade, Conservatives have learned much from their colleagues down south. If left-leaning Canadians want their own causes to survive, they must do the same.

The era of public funding for independently conceived good deeds is over. To keep their dreams alive, activists must develop new sources of support, while sympathetic citizens must dig deep into their own pockets.

(dear readers, I have included this mea culpa, word for word as published in the Toronto Star in my blog so that you could witness the end of the end for those who, without shame wasted our tax dollars until the tax dollars dried up!)

                                       -30-

Howard Ramos is associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University.
James Ron is Stassen Chair of International Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and this year is a visiting professor at CIDE, a Mexico City research institute.

Is Ontario's Energy system being operated without a plan?

On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, how appropriate is it that the Ontario renewable Energy ship is taking on water, too and yet, like Captain Edward Smith snoozing and leaving a junior officer in charge, one would never know the dangers that lurk ahead from how the Liberals are talking. On March 22, the minority provincial Liberal government announced the results of their highly anticipated feed-in tariff (FIT) review and the message from the bridge was “Full speed ahead and stay the course.”

Supporting this message, our present Captain/Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley made reference to how renewable energy accounts for only about 5% of the increase in electricity bills. The problem with such a definitive statement is that it leads to scrutiny, like 5% of what, and for how long?

A recent electricity price-increase forecast for 2012-16, filed with the Ontario Energy Board, helpfully provides some answers, with wind and solar energy forecast to directly add $3.05-billion to annual provincial energy bills. By estimating the costs required to integrate wind and solar, the added annual cost rises another $850-million. Does this really mean that the additional annual cost for wind and solar will reach $3.9-billion by 2016, resulting in a residential bill increase of 3.17¢ per kilowatt hour or an annual $319 per household by 2016? Yikes! In contrast to the present captain’s recent statement, this represents 54% of the total increase expected for 2012-16.

This is a lot higher than 5%, so who has the story wrong?

Could this disparity have something to do with decisions made by our Energy ship’s first captain, who long ago bailed out but allowed an external and somewhat self-interested group to recommend a course that set Ontario electricity into an ice field? At the time, our Captain promised everyone that his 'Green Energy and Economy Act' would increase taxpayer bills by only 1% per year, while acknowledging that unit prices would rise significantly, so the only way for consumers to limit their increase would be to conserve. The problem is that in a business such as electricity, where most of the costs are fixed, uniformly reducing consumption leads to higher unit rates and largely unchanged bills. The only hope for conservationists is that no one else will conserve and that they will be in the small minority.

Consider that Ontario's power rates will be the highest of any jurisdiction in North America by 2013. While rates in the U.S. are flat, Ontario's residential rates are rising at a pace of about 8 to 9% per year until at least 2016. The Liberal government's continuously repeated message is that thousands of new jobs have been created from renewable energy already, and that wind power is replacing coal and slashing health costs. Too bad there isn't a whiff of truth about any of those claims despite the Liberal's vast network of government-funded lobbyist and non-independent agencies in place to sustain this deceitful message.

Which brings me to the question...is it possible that Ontario's Energy system is being operated without a plan?

Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter reported last December in his review of McGuinty’s renewable energy policies that “no independent, objective, expert investigation had been done to examine the potential effects of renewable energy policies on prices, job creation, and greenhouse gas emissions.” As a result, “billions of dollars were committed to renewable energy without fully evaluating the impact, the trade-offs, and the alternatives through a comprehensive business-case analysis.” This leads to the question of what type of jobs McGuinty was talking about in 2009 when he made the claim 50,000 would be created by the end of 2012.

McCarter concluded: “A majority of the jobs will be temporary. The (energy) ministry projected that of the 50,000 jobs, about 40,000 would be related to renewable energy. A local media review of this projection suggests 30,000, or 75% of these jobs, would be construction jobs and would last only from one to three years. The high proportion of short-term jobs was not apparent from the ministry’s announcement.”

Finally, when McGuinty claimed in 2009 that 50,000 jobs would be created, did he mean net new jobs? In other words, would his green energy program actually create 50,000 more jobs for Ontarians than existed in 2009?

McCarter found the government’s 50,000 estimate did not factor in “jobs that would be lost as a result of promoting renewable energy” and “experience in other jurisdictions suggests that jobs created in the renewable energy sector are often offset by jobs lost as a result of the impact of higher renewable energy electricity prices on business, industry and consumers.” McCarter noted that since Ontario modelled its Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program on renewable energy pricing on FIT programs in Spain and Germany, their experiences could well be relevant to Ontario .

He cited a 2009 Spanish study which found “for each job created through renewable energy programs, about two jobs were lost in other sectors of the economy” and a 2009 German study which found, “the cost of creating renewable-energy- related jobs was up to US$240,000 per job per year, far exceeding average wages in other sectors.”

As a side note, it is interesting to observe the hypocrisy in the partisan media, especially considering the release of the federal AG report has certain commentators in hysterics over waste in government operations while the Ont AG report raises little curiosity over flagrant waste of taxpayers dollars despite a plethora of taxpayer interest in decisions made by this minority government. A related story 'Wind wastes water'.. covers the fiasco of dumping exported wind generated electricity, while spilling water over hydro dams. Surely this issue would be of interest to some experienced investigative reporters in the partisan media, but so far this has not been the case. Maybe this is a story for another day?

But getting back to the issue at hand, let's add a little salt to the energy wound, shall we? The Ontario Electricity Financial Corp annual report....
http://www.oefc.on.ca/pdf/oefc...
details on page 5 the current situation regarding the stranded debt. Prior to 2005, the Liberals were not paying down the stranded debt, even though the line item on taxpayer bills claimed it was. After that, when the Global Adjustment started to get large, did the Liberals start to pay down that debt. What are the prospects of any of these thieves going to jail over this? Why is it only in government can one break the law and get away with it?

The Ontario Liberal Energy fiasco, that has given us uncompetitive power rates is miserably failing to create an industry which will never be competitive and once again is saddling the Ontario taxpayer with another mess to pay for. Germany, that has very few natural resources and imports most of its energy is backing off on wind and solar!

Even the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers' released a paper on the stresses wind is putting on the system, to wit, "Based on findings from an independent engineering review, OSPE's report expresses concern that the present electrical grid is not well equipped to integrate a large, rapid increase in intermittent renewable generation. Without policy changes, Ontario will see a significant rise in both electricity rates and greenhouse gas emissions."

Do we have a reasonable option to consider? Well, we do!

Natural Gas is plentiful, very clean and very cheap, in fact, recent improvements in extraction have reduced the consumer cost from Enbridge as follows...
2012 - 8.06c/m3
2011 - 13.3c/m3
2010 - 14.7c/m3
2009 - 21.7c/m3
2008 - 27.4c/m3
2007 - 25.9c/m3
2006 - 35c/m3

In the end, due to Liberal intransigence, Ontario may have expensive renewable energy that does not replace coal, may not deliver health savings, may cause a net job loss and that also contribute to a costly supply glut. And who pays for all of this, you ask? Why, Ontario electricity consumers in steerage. Those in first class, which includes offshore suppliers, far-flung and local project developers and investors, are all making out like bandits while those setting Ontario’s myopic course seem strangely indifferent to what’s happening to the rest of us in third class.

Is it time for a new Energy direction?




                                                      -30-

“Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists.”

April, 12, 2012,


On Tuesday, March 27, a House Judiciary Committee meeting produced these statements from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.): that said.....“Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists.”

In consequence, Nadler believes a new bill that requires parental notification for minor females who cross state lines to secure an abortion is “fundamentally flawed,” because it assumes that parents have their children’s best interests at heart. This is an old argument routinely used by the state to usurp the parental role, and it has been thoroughly refuted by The New American’s William F. Jasper in the article linked to in this sentence. In a testy exchange with Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) Rep. Nadler also said “We’re not dealing with human beings at this point.” Nadler needs to know that there are bypass laws on the books to protect minors in hard cases involving abuse or neglect.

Also at the committee meeting Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) tried in vain to create an exemption that would allow grandparents or older siblings to take minors across state lines for abortions in lieu of parents, but that failed. In her plea she stated “Doctors, not congress members, should be the judge when it comes to deciding the best care for women.” (Yes, she voted for Obama Care.) She cited “medical emergencies” in minors as the reason for her concern, another old refuted argument.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was well recognized and supported by U.S court cases that parents have complete authority -- God-given -- over their children.  It wasn’t until the latter half of that modern century up to the present time that we have seen representatives in government uninvitedly assuming parental roles. The strong tone of objections to something as simple as the Child Interstate Abortion Nullification Act, H.R 2299 is proof positive that it’s vitally needed legislation.

House Resolution 2299 would make it illegal to transport a minor across a State line with the intent that such a minor obtain an abortion without parental notification. This bill also would make it illegal, and punishable, to circumvent the over 30 state-level laws currently in place that require abortion notification for parents of minors by transporting a minor across a State line. These laws are in place to protect minor children. Abortion is not a simple ear-piercing, nor does it have the effect of an aspirin, both actions that need parental approval in certain situations. Abortion is a potentially dangerous medical procedure, whether it be a surgical or chemical abortion, with life-long emotional and psychological consequences.

If a minor was assaulted, raped, sexually abused, etc., surely our representatives in Congress would acknowledge that parents have a right to know about such situations. Without this bill male predators who use secret abortions to cover up their heinous crimes with minor girls would be protected, as would the huge profits of blood money that abortion providers continue to collect for the killing of the unborn.

Some of the bill’s summarized provisions are:

• Amends the federal criminal code to prohibit transporting a minor child across a state line to obtain an abortion with the intent to evade the right of a parent under any law in the minor’s state of residence that requires parental involvement in the minor’s abortion decision. Makes an exception for an abortion necessary to save the life of the minor.
• Imposes a fine and/or prison term of up to one year on a physician who performs or induces an abortion on an out-of-state minor in violation of the parental notification requirements in this bill. Requires such physician to give 24-hour actual or constructive notice to a parent of the minor seeking an abortion, subject to certain exceptions.

In essence, anyone who objects to this bill supports the ongoing law-breaking that is carried out by many who intentionally cross state lines from a parental-notification state to one that is not.

The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act protects the fundamental rights of parents. With 161 co-sponsors, it has a more than a fair chance of being passed in the House. The Senate has a companion bill, S. 1241 S. with 32 co-sponsors.

Has your Rep. already been contacted on the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security?


                                          -30-

Rick Santorum has dropped out of the Presidential race today!

April 11, 2012,

Something of historic proportions is happening in America. I can sense it, feel it, smell it, I know what it looks like, and can see how Americans are reacting to it. Yes, a perfect storm is brewing. There is something happening within America that has been evolving for the last couple of years and now that Rick Santorum has dropped out of the Presidential race today, the pace has dramatically quickened.

It doesn't seem that long ago when 'Government Sachs' left Lehman Bros. to twist in the breeze only to get tripped up by the fallout...like AIG, GM, GE and Chrysler, just to name a few! Absurd when you consider that the entire mortgage mess was created by a Democrat-led congress that demanded and then codified into law the requirement that banks must make massive loans to people they knew, or ought to have known could not or would not ever pay back! Why? We still do not have an answer! The only explanation came from Obama when he said that, "there is enough blame to go around!" We learned awhile ago that the Federal Reserve, which seems to have little or no real oversight by anyone, has loaned trillions of dollars over the past few years, but will not divulge to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is your money. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? And I always thought America was 'a government of the people and for the people'! All this time, I thought elected leaders took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Your government has intentionally down-sized industry by turning their backs on your manufacturing machine.....the Golden Goose who kept on laying golden eggs, creating jobs and prosperity for those who chose to work hard and take risks!

From a Canadian perspective, the beginning of the end came when Clinton disposed of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999; granting bankers unfettered control over your economy after that control was taken away from them during the Great Depression, and the result has been devastating! Many changes occurred after that, too but there was no need to intentionally degrade your school system, ignore your history, and ignore your founding documents. Your way of life is exceptional, sought after and is worth preserving! Now, too many students cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate what they believe in. It's beyond us why parents are not revolting and teachers picketing. Why do School Boards continue to back mediocrity? After all, Americans have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) Congress has corrupted a sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change a civil way of life. And why did Congress support mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others with your tax dollars to turn your voting system into a banana republic. Moral hazard has been staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.

Thankfully, the mortgage industry is now in slow recovery after a terminal collapse but housing prices in some states, like Florida are still in free fall. Major industries are stabilizing, but with 33% fewer jobs. A reduced banking system is hanging in after being on the verge of collapse. Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare, Fannie and Freddie. Confidence, like credit are precious commodities....proving beyond a reasonable doubt that if you don't know what they mean, you'll have a hard time attracting either! Yes, the house has passed a budget the last 2 years and a multitude of other bills, however, the Democrats control the senate and nothing is being passed or discussed or makes it to committee where they could iron out an agreement.  To put it quite simply, under Harry Reid, the senate is not doing their job, so yes, the house is impotent but not because they have not been working because they have. 

The big question from north of the border is that we all see what is happening in America but we don't see enough folks doing anything about it!  It is almost like too many in America are just sitting back and watching a horror story unfold!  It's like too many of our friends to the south are transfixed by rhetoric.  Many Canadians see it, so surely Americans see it, too, but why aren't more doing something about it??? We just do not get it. Are Americans hoping that someone else will change things?  I have never been so concerned for America as I am now.

I'm confident that change is indeed coming in November but it will take time to undo this mess. The good news is that, at least this will be the end of a wayward beginning so that our American friends...and Canadians, too can begin to rebuild trade and prosperity between the two most trusting trading partners on earth.

Americans have a choice this November! Our fingers are crossed!

                                  -30-

War on Women, vol 1

As a memorial to Miss Aksa Parvez and Miss Zainab Shafia, I am providing this article by a noted Toronto writer, verbatim to my readers. Just two of too many young local woman; murdered by their family members; currently incarcerated in Canadian prisons for a very long time, I will be surfing the web to gather timely information for a continuing series about the 'War on Women' so that we may understand the mindset that justifies and perpetuates 'honour killings' in Canada. Hopefully, by exposing this scourge, our governments will provide safe housing for those threatened.

More controversial Muslim books for sale,

By Terry Davidson, Toronto Sun, Friday, March 30, 2012


TORONTO - An Islamic bookstore in east Toronto is selling books that urge Muslims to usurp the Western world and install an Islamic State in its place. The books, written by deceased Islamic scholar Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi – are available at the Islamic Circle of North America bookstore in Scarborough. “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation that rules it,” Maududi wrote in Jihad in Islam. “Islam requires the earth – not just a portion – but the whole planet.” Maududi was an influential Pakistani journalist, theologian and Muslim revivalist leader who wrote more than 120 books and pamphlets and lived from 1903 to 1979. He is described in the preface of one of the books as an author who “provided the present-day revival of Islam with its intellectual foundations.” Maududi’s books carry a common theme of Islam as a revolutionary “ideology and program which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.”
“Jihad,” which he refers to in at least one book as a war against non-Muslims, is in fact “undertaken for the collective well-being of mankind” to establish “God’s order” in the world and create a “just and equitable social order among human beings,” he wrote. Terrorism expert David Harris calls such material — antiquated or not — incredibly “problematic” to National security, but goes on to say that because of Canada’s freedom of expression legislation, police and the courts, in many cases, can’t do much about it.
“This is highly problematic,” said Harris, adding that with Canada’s ever expanding immigration of people from Middle Eastern countries - such as Egypt — the chances of importing people with radical ideologies also increases. “What we’re seeing now is not even a hint of what we will be living ... We’re going to see an expanding of these tendencies.”
A request for the Islamic Society of Toronto to speak about the books was not immediately returned. Tarek Fatah, a Muslim moderate and renowned commentator, cautioned that such literature can be dangerously attractive to young men raised in overly-strict Muslim households. “The radical Islamists ... keep pumping this idea that ... their Islamic heritage is far superior than what the Western world has done, and that the West, what it’s doing, is absolutely Satanic, and these books over here validate those issues,” said Fatah. Most of Maududi’s books — small and slim paperbacks — could be bought for as little as $1. When one of the store’s managers was asked by a reporter who posed as a customer whether he stocked “Jihad in Islam” — arguably the most radical book of the bunch — he said he hadn’t carried it for years because the RCMP had been to his store to ask questions about why it would carry such a book. Another manager said the store didn’t carry any of the six books on the reporter’s list. But within 30 minutes, the reporter found Jihad in Islam and four others of Maududi’s stacked on a bottom shelf in the middle of the store. When it was revealed to the store manager that it was a Toronto Sun reporter who bought those books, he was irate, saying he “will say nothing” before disappearing into an office at the back of the store. Like the manager, the RCMP would not comment.

In the The Process of the Islamic Revolution, Maududi wrote that Muslims “should be prepared to sacrifice all prospects of personal advancement in wordily life” including giving up friends and their own and their parent’s expectations to further the expansion of Islamic belief. “Society, government, law, nation, country, whatsoever obstructs the achievement of their object [of an Islamic Revolution], they should be prepared to struggle against it,” he wrote. On the other hand, it is “impossible” for Muslims to live under an “alien State System” and observe Muslim beliefs, he wrote. In Jihad In Islam, Maududi wrote: “All rules which he considers wrong; all taxes that he deems unlawful; all matters which he believes to be evil; the civilization and way of life which, in his view, are wicked; the education system which seems to him as fatal – all these will be so inexorably imposed on him, his and his children that evasion will become impossible,” he wrote. As soon as Islam “captures” another state, it will ban gambling and prostitution, outlaw business dealings forbidden by Islamic law and “make it obligatory for non-Muslim women to observe the minimum standards of modesty in dress as required by Islamic Law.”

                                                       -30-


Watch this eye opening video, in real time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0hKEd6rzbeg

Right to Work... a lifeline for Ontario industry!

Right to Work... a lifeline for Ontario industry!

Are the Liberals going to wait until the last of Ontario's manufacturing sector moves out before they act? Are we destined to move away from manufacturing and all become 'burger-flippers'?

It's sad news indeed for Ontario that Caterpillar Inc.’s locomotive operations in London, Ont., a 62-year-old plant just shifted to Indiana; a new Right to Work state two days after the Governor made the announcement. For a little history, on Jan. 1, the company locked the workers out and on Feb. 3, Caterpillar’s Progress Rail Services unit announced it would cease operations at its Electro-Motive Diesel locomotive assembly plant, citing the need to be cost-competitive in a global market and closed the plant for good, eliminating even more Ontario manufacturing jobs.

Electro-Motive Canada (a subsidiary owned by Caterpillar) initially cut its work force last summer. The company then asked for a top end wage cut from $40/hr to $34/hr. When the Union said no, the company never returned to the bargaining table, despite a photo-op by Premier McGuinty.

This isn’t just about the 700 people who lost their jobs that day. It’s not even about the 1,000-plus who will follow because their jobs as truckers and suppliers depended on the plant, or the impact on a community that already has one of the highest jobless rates in Canada. It’s not even about the harsh side of global competition and its impact on the middle class that raises unsettling questions about competitiveness in Central Canada and the future prospects of Ontario, the country’s most populous province and home to 40 per cent of its economic activity.

No, this is about the impact of the Right to Work initiative spreading throughout the United States, in fact pushing further northward that forced Caterpillar and many others to turn their backs on Ontario. Why even Wisconsin and Ohio last year passed laws stripping most public sector unions of collective bargaining rights.

It goes without saying that the Union/Liberal movement received a terminal wake-up call when Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana House recently voted 54-44 to make Indiana the 23rd right-to-work state in just the latest successful legislative push targeting union power following a Republican sweep of statehouses in 2010, making Indiana the first Rust Belt state to ban contracts that require workers to pay mandatory union fees for representation..and announcing, that Indiana is now open for business. Indiana would mark the first win in 10 years for national right-to-work advocates who have pushed unsuccessfully for the measure in other states. But few right-to-work states boast Indiana’s union clout, borne of a long manufacturing legacy. Oklahoma passed right-to-work legislation in 2001 but has a rural-based economy that produces comparatively fewer union jobs than Indiana.

While Union Bosses, like Teamsters President Jim Hoffa sounded resigned to the right-to-work measure’s passage, he promised a backlash by remaining unionists with his partisan message that his supporters will rise up to challenge new legislation despite the fact that main street voters resoundingly kicked the Union/Liberal movement to the curb.

Caterpillar’s move out of Ontario may well be an extreme and brutal example but it’s just the latest in a string of closures, from AstraZeneca’s research facility in Montreal (132 jobs) to heavy-truck manufacturer Navistar in Chatham, Ont. (1,100 jobs). The London area has been particularly hard hit: Ford Motor Co. of Canada closed its doors in nearby St. Thomas last year (1,200-plus jobs) while 3M Canada has trimmed its manufacturing work force in London to 235 people from 400 five years ago. The closures are the result of fierce global competition, automation, and a currency that trades at parity compared with 62 cents to the U.S. dollar a decade ago, obliterating a key cost advantage.

In years past, the jobs have flowed to cheaper manufacturing centres, like China or India. Now, they’re just as likely to shift to the suddenly business-friendly United States. Global competition isn’t just between multinational companies. It’s also between regions, desperate to attract jobs to areas where unemployment is high and local economies have been ravaged. Why even southern Ontario is now attempting to attract Nuclear waste!

In Caterpillar's case, the locomotive jobs are only moving a scant six hours away, to Muncie, Indiana, where junior wages of $12 to $16/hr matched those of the company's offer to the London plant employees. Muncie’s own jobless rate is 9 per cent, though officials figure the real rate is double that.

While some Union Bosses may insist this is a race to the bottom, London’s jobless rate was 9 per cent even before Caterpillar closed the Electro-Motive Canada plant, well above the national average of 7.6 per cent.

Southwestern Ontario, which is the economic locomotive of the Canadian economy… is still struggling. Plants have come and gone over the years. This time seems different. For one, Electro-Motive Canada isn’t facing economic hardship. It just posted a record quarterly profit, as any of its 700 former workers will say. The plant was productive, profitable and reliable, with a stellar safety record.  
It is easily forgotten that one of the causes of the evolution of the modern Ontarian urban union was the lawless suppression of workers by the Liberal party affiliated political machines, and yet it did not take so very long before the union became an outgrowth of that same political machine. And having wiped out nearly every independent industry with which it was associated, the only unions still surviving are those in control of either municipal services or provincially subsidized service providers, particularly in the medical field.

If the union began as a way to negotiate salaries and working conditions between employers and workers, the modern day union is often little more than the Ontario Liberal government and their union supporters bleeding the public dry in order to subsidize a political party and a union leadership that brings in the votes for their party.

The situation is most critical in Toronto, but many GTA budgets are almost as badly strained by the combination of municipal union contracts and the subsidized services that they are associated with and is a harsh reminder of the utter greed and ruthlessness of the union’s last stand, their death grip on public services fed by taxpayer money. These stands have little to do with worker’s rights. They have next to nothing in common with the old union image of underpaid workers protesting outside of factories. It’s still about exploitation, but it’s about the exploitation of the public by a Union-Liberal government political establishment.

As the Union Bosses of old have given way to managers and then to Liberal politicians, the Union Bosses of today are the only bosses still in the game, who enjoy wealth and power far beyond those of the average taxpayer being fleeced without his or her consent. Union rhetoric may pretend that they are contending with Mayors and Premiers, but in reality it’s the public that they’re really contending with. Even Mark Ferguson, leader of local 416 recently acknowledged that the 'public hates unions'! Their threats of mayhem and strikes have hardly any effect on Liberal politicians, but are intended to target the public, instead. And the money that they’re paid with is taxpayer money and too often, Liberal politicians are more than happy to give in.

Union negotiations with Liberal politicians that they help elect are a corrupt farce, because the money extracted from the taxpayer goes in part to the same politicians who decide whether to accept or reject their offer. In any law abiding system, this would be a tremendous conflict of interest, like sending in your real estate lawyer to act as your mortgage broker. But under our current system it is actually commonplace for unions which live off contracts with Liberal politicians, to be able to fund and work to elect those same politicians. And it represents a level of corruption that makes corporate tax shelters that Liberal pundits complain about seem almost petty. And now Ontario is collapsing under the weight of dirty contracts with unions that act like a Praetorian Guard, elevating and removing Premiers and Mayors who displease them.

The right to work in Canada, free of Union influence should be a fundamental right just like the right to vote. Under our law, if you want to get a job you have to authenticate your identity and authenticate your citizenship or your work visa to be able to work as a citizen.

That is no different than what municipalities across Ontario, and indeed across Canada do when each Canadian citizen enters their respective polling station. So why is it that a company can hire us but then we are told we have to report to some Union Boss who we didn't agree to work for?

If this was just corrupt collusion between Business Owners and Union Bosses, as has often been the case with some unions, then the only victims would be union members. But this is corrupt collusion between Union Bosses and Liberal politicians, exchanging public money for political support. And not letting go even when the public is bleeding red and there’s literally no more money to give. Unions are always at the head of the line; unions get paid, while the public is delayed. Ontario unions spend millions with their Working Families Coalition to put Premier McGuinty in place and more to keep him there. How long can the system go on before it breaks down? That doesn’t really matter as the men at the top in Ontario got there through union backing.

While many private sector Union Bosses have became virtual pariahs with union jobs either going south or being outsourced as union jobs in manufacturing dwindle down to around 20%, the Ontario public sector unions remain a tick fixed on the bloodstream of the taxpayer. You didn’t have to be a factory owner to be drained by them. You didn’t need to own a single share of stock. All you had to do was live and pay taxes in an area where public sector unions had you gripped in their claws.

The intersection of entitlements and public sector unions and the Liberal political machine meant that money was being exchanged for political support, and the folks outraged were not the ones that Liberal politicians cared about. They still made a show of driving a hard bargain, but more often they showed up at union conferences to loud cheers. Their old electorate paid taxes. Their new electorate gobbled them.

Factories were once Ontario’s largest source of employment. While still sizable as the third-largest employer after the health care and retail sectors, manufacturing has slid dramatically with over 300,000 manufacturing jobs disappearing on McGuinty's watch, and today the number of people who work in factories hovers near a 30-year low.

The recent Drummond report on the state of Ontario’s finances minced no words about manufacturing’s role in Ontario. The sector has dwindled as a share of the province’s output and employment base and this trend will continue as the manufacturing industry is hammered by a strong dollar and uneven American demand.

Statistics help tell the story:

1. Factory employment, traditionally a source of high-paying jobs has faded to just 11.8 per cent of total employment, half the levels they were in 1976     
   2.  Census numbers this month show just how dramatically the country is tilting. Alberta tops the country’s population growth, followed by British Columbia. Ontario’s rate of growth is below the national average for the first time in a quarter of a century. 
         3. London tumbled out of Ontario’s top-10 big city list.

Much talk on the picket line at Electro-Motive Canada centred on Alberta. One former worker left for Fort McMurray just last month. Others are contemplating a similar move. For them, the Made-In-Canada era is over. If Central Canada’s cost advantage is fading, and if corporate taxes have already been cut to below those of the United States, what else can the industry do?

And this brings us to 2012 where the oppressed worker is now the taxpayer, whose income and future are being garnished by unions. The poor man standing out in the rain is not the union employee, but the man waiting to collect another check, that will be torn apart and consumed by Union Bosses and Liberal politicians. Who will then protect these folks, from the unions? 


On March 27, 2012, Ontario Liberals tabled OUR province's very disappointing fiscal 2012 budget. Due to McGuinty's inability to control his spending addiction, we will not see business taxes coming down until he is able to bring his deficit down...meaning NEVER?

Ontario has lost too many major employers with more on the way out despite much talk of lowering business taxes to help grow the private sector and create jobs. In all fairness, our business taxes are relatively low right now and really are only one of the minor problems employers face. Other than exploding energy costs, the major problem we are having in manufacturing is staying competitive in the global economy.

Manufacturers need assistance right now to help grow the private sector by removing barriers to success if we are to deal with our present provincial government's onerous accumulated debt and outrageous deficit.

Only by creating new manufacturing jobs and protecting existing manufacturing jobs to get and keep Ontarian's working is this possible! If this concept is worth exploring, I would like to suggest the formation of a 'Blue Ribbon' panel, encompassing taxpayers and business owners to delve a little deeper to perhaps make some policy recommendations . 

Ontario has the most educated skilled workforce in the world. We are multilingual and multicultural. Ontario may not be the source of well-paying manufacturing jobs it once was, but manufacturing will hardly fade into the sunset provided we are able to re-float this ship with Right to Work legislation and protect the Ontario worker from Union/Liberal malfeasance as I, along with many Ontarian's believe, as a province, we should produce things that people want to buy, and that our children's future is not just about oil and natural resources.

.

                 -30-