Facebook Comment

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Thanks everyone, I'm honestly getting burned out over this stuff after asking people to get active mostly by myself for a year and now feeling isolated for it.

It's mostly my fault, I can get all worked up and figure out how to beat the NWO (see my Platform on my website), but I'm not sure how to think differently and help us move when I often get more credit for thinking (or drinking) the same as everyone else. I feel sad about seeing all of us slipping, including myself, or knowing most of us could have a 20 min convo about this stuff a couple of years ago, but now often struggle to have a 2 min convo.

I don't want to "chill out" for the masses or "re-explain" this stuff again to people who know it, I just hope we can get inspired by our fave people in history, then calmly, consistently and creatively inform our neighbours, then pressure our elected officials to handle specific requests on a regular basis. I think men should take leadership roles in this to protect women, children and the elderly, we'd all feel better and respect each other more, plus we're bigger and built for this.

If most people can't handle it, we can go underground like Freejasonry, or groups of guys get together once a week to talk freely and long enough to figure out local solutions. It's not "secret", just "polite" here in Communist Canada. If your spouse sees celebs on TV and wants to run marathons to raise money for big banks and big pharma, you can make up for it by stopping them from making us sicker and broker. People say why should we care if stuff is bad for us?

I say the big charities say 40% of us will get cancer, that's why. We have enough dirt on them to improve everyone's lives, bury the idea of "globalization" in a grave forever and re-take control over where we live. We just have to avoid getting used to what's happening and to get used to getting us to fight back instead. The good news is that people don't mind us asking, so I'm happy for that. Toronto is a Great Place To Tell The Truth, we've proved it, now we just have to improve it and go for the win

- Peace, Vij

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Guide to the mayoral election

The Toronto Star

Published 20 minutes ago

The mayoral election is Monday. Still haven't made up your mind? Our guide to the platforms of the three candidates can help:

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Personal Vehicle Tax (worth $49.5 million in 2010)

Ford: Abolish starting sometime in 2011.

Pantalone: Phase out over four years.

Smitherman: Reduce by one third to $40 a year.

Land Transfer Tax (worth $204 million in 2010)

Ford: Abolish as of Jan. 1, 2012. Part of his campaign against tax, tax, tax, spend, spend spend.

Pantalone: Keep.

Smitherman: Keep.

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Property taxes

Ford: Increase in line with inflation, currently running less than 2 per cent.

Pantalone: Increase tax on homeowners by 2.5 per cent; hike commercial properties by 0.833 per cent.

Smitherman: Freeze for one year. He has vowed to make himself budget chair, conduct a 100-day line-by-line review of the budget and go from there.

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Light rail transit

Ford: Negotiate with province to put its Transit City funding into subways instead.

Pantalone: Build Transit City.

Smitherman: Grow Transit City by, extending the proposed Finch line to Humber College; tunneling Eglinton to Black Creek; adding a waterfront line to the West Donlands.

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Bike lanes

Ford: Build ravine and trail-based cycling network.

Pantalone: Continue city’s program of testing dedicated bike lanes on major arteries. Promised to complete 1,000 kilometres of cycles routes by 2012

Smitherman: Expand bike routes through hydro corridors and ravines.

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Contracting out

Ford: Contract out all garbage collection and recycling.

Pantalone: No further contracting out.

Smitherman: Consider contracting out all garbage pickup, some bus routes and the two city-owned ski hills.

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Debt reduction

Ford: Use budget savings and asset sales, mostly land, to cut debt by $1.58 billion over four years.

Pantalone: Comfortable with current debt burden of about $3 billion.

Smitherman: Use money from asset sales, including land plus selling for $100 million the city’s 47 per cent interest in heating and cooling company Enwave. But instead of paying off debt, he would create a transit fund.

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Hiring freeze

Ford: Replace only half the staff that leave/retire each year. In 2011, that means lopping off 1,500 jobs and saving $67 million, with increasing savings in following years.

Pantalone: Continue Mayor David Miller’s “hiring slowdown” where a second look is required before a vacancy is filled.

Smitherman: Fill only four out of every six vacancies, meaning city would shed 1,300 jobs in 2011, saving $61 million.

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Size of council

There are currently 44 councillors and the mayor. In Toronto, there are 22 federal and provincial ridings each covering the same area. The ridings have been split into two parts to create 44 city wards. Ford argues if those hardworking MPs and MPPs can represent the larger area, why can’t councillors? The counter-argument is each city ward has about 60,000 people, more than North Bay.

Ford: Cut council in half to 22 councillors for the next term which begins Dec. 1, 2014.

Pantalone: Keep current council, noting there were 106 municipal politicians running Toronto in the days before amalgamation in 1998

Smitherman: Keep current size while setting up panel for advice on making city hall more responsive to citizens.

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Cost of council

Ford: Cut councillors’ annual expense budgets to $30,000 from $50,445, saving $900,000 in total, and trim the mayor’s office budget by $512,000. As well, pare back councillor budgets to hire staff by $1.4 million.

Pantalone: No cuts.

Smitherman: Freeze politicians’ pay for four years and cut $2 million from mayor and councillor budgets.

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Environment

Ford: Didn’t respond to candidate questionnaire from Toronto Environmental Alliance.

Pantalone: Granted an A+ for answering yes to all 20 questions on issues like building transit, diverting waste, buying local food, providing bike lanes, saving energy and fighting pollution.

Smitherman: Also won an A+. Answered yes to 18 of 20 questions. He wouldn’t rule out incineration of garbage and wouldn’t commit to implementing the bike network, including on arterial roads, by 2012.

Compiled by Paul Moloney

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/879694--guide-to-the-mayoral-election

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FAILING BOYS

Are we medicating a disorder or treating boyhood as a disease?

Carolyn Abraham

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Oct. 18, 2010 10:53PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010 1:19PM EDT

Last year, more than two million prescriptions for Ritalin and other ADHD drugs were written specifically for children under 17, and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males. Part 3 of a 6-part series.

For school children across the country – most of them boys – taking a drug for attention deficit disorder each morning has become as commonplace as downing a vitamin. But the daily ritual has been quietly growing in Canada, year after year – a trend that's dwarfing rates in other countries and raising disturbing questions about the forces driving it.

Figures compiled for The Globe and Mail by IMS Health, an independent firm that tracks pharmaceutical sales, show prescriptions for Ritalin and other amphetamine-like drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder shot up to 2.9 million in 2009, a jump of more than 55 per cent in four years.

More than two million were written specifically for children under 17 – a leap of 43 per cent since 2005 – and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males – a ratio some see as evidence that society is making a malady of boyhood itself. ...

... Our penchant for the pills has pegged Canada – after Iceland and the U.S. – as one of the world's top three consumers of methylphenidate, including Ritalin and similar drugs, according to the 2009 Annual Report of the UN International Narcotic Control Board, which based rankings on per capita consumption. A 2007 U.S. report on global use of ADHD drugs also singled out Canada for “higher than expected” consumption, and suggested our exposure to American advertising and “cultural norms” play a role.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/failing-boys/are-we-medicating-a-disorder-or-treating-boyhood-as-a-disease/article1762859/singlepage/#articlecontent

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