Words of Wisdom (You Decide)

I tend to agree with this fellow,.who sounds thoroughly pissed off at the Waste that goes on all around us,....It's not like we don't know it's going on,but for the most part either Apathy or (we just don't give a crap------- Oh yea ,that's the same thing isn't it..lol)

Read his article if you like,..............   I wonder when we will be mad enough to advocate anarchy,.throw these thieves out....but alas it's what were used to I guess...

 

• Victor Schukov

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Waste not, want not, not part of governments' agendas

posted by Victor Schukov at 8h37

 A wise old World War 2 veteran, a Polish immigrant, once told me,“ Canadian government has always collected more than enough tax money to be able to feed and find employment for every last citizen. Governments continuously waste a gigantic sum of money.”  I have always said that if the federal government was a corporate management team, they would be fired for running at a loss. Furthermore, with today’s flavour for white colour crime, we would need to double our prisons to accommodate upper class civil servants jailed for abuse of public funds.   

But a few uncovered sponsorship-like scandals and a smattering of crooked Parliamentarian bilkers spotlighted is mere pin money when compared to the hedonistic waste of luxurious institutions and programs that we can no longer afford in Depression 2009. It’s “Rome is burning” out there, folks, and the politicians are fiddling with our money. (Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and all his Tory cohorts  fly only on executive class on tickets costing up to $14,000 a pop. And they all travel with aides.)

  

Here’s my short list of ultra-big waste, things I would jettison faster than the life cycle of a fruit fly:

  

Politicians’ Pensions: What other job do you know of that votes itself handsome pensions that kick in after only a few years on the job and at a very young age and while they move on to gorge on greener pastures earning top bucks in the private sector? If their consciences can survive to 75 years old, here is just a sampling of what these self-indulgent “civil servants” are already dipping into:

  Brian Tobin (LIB): $3,907,507Svend Robinson (NDP): $3,660,930

Sheila Copps (LIB): $2,551,223.

  

Want to know what Jean Charest will start nibbling at when he leaves politics?: $4,525,000. What is your pension worth? And, by the way, you’re paying for theirs.

  

At present, we are bankrolling a stable of otherwise employed professional/premature retirees  to the tune of over $125 million dollars and growing.

  

The Senate: $70,000 annual salary and %150 a day expenses if they show up for work for a mere 100 days per year. (Very few get out of bed to do all the meetings); plus over $30,000 in business perks like free gym privileges, free flights for families up to 52 shots per year, etc. Good plum work if you can get it. Frank Mahovalich is a Senator. There are 105 Senators; total orgy cost over $15 million a year, and that doesn’t include the cost of running the buildings and assistants.

  

Total cost: over $90 mil to pamper unelected yes-people and name-droppers. Don’t believe the propaganda; The Senate has in recent times shot down only four bills, and that was in the 1990s. When they flexed their anemic muscle at free trade and the GST they were glossed over, after some feeble, pretentious debate.

  

Harper really wants to eliminate the Senate, and that proves that it is really an unnecessary appendage. And there is no compromise. Experts say that the cost of an elected Senate would quadruple because of Parliamentary slowdowns with real resistance and discussion over bills.

     Average age of the rubber stamping old boys/girls country club: 64

   (They’re just punching in while you’re punching out.)

  

Mandatory retirement age: 75

  

Rule of thumb: You can give 10 people a job for what one retirement-age-already-rich Senator gets in salary, perks and operation cost.

   

The Governor General:

Nice dresser. To appreciate how much political experience is required for the job, Jean Beliveau was once wooed.

  

Taxpayer cost per year: 50 million dollars.

   

CBC:

  

They just spent 24 million dollars on two HD broadcast trucks so we can watch Hockey Night in Canada more clearly. TSN, RDS and RSE don’t charge you a slug. According to CBC spokesman Jeff Keen, “better value for the taxpayers.” How about its value to the majority of Canadians who don’t watch hockey?

  

In a recent conference for broadcasting executives in Turkey’s most posh hotel, former CBC president Robert Rabinovich went to “a unique opportunity to discuss future co-productions from around the world.” Isn’t CBC about Canadian-only productions?

  

Your Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: an almost bottomless pit for executive entitlement and artists too lazy or talentless to make it on their own nickel.

  

And don’t talk to me about protecting our cultural integrity: I am not defined by The Rick Mercer Report and Marketplace, much less the imported Coronation Street and Jeopardy.

  

Annual cost of refilling the CBC pit: 1.1 Billion. (Are we so insecure about our cultural identity? Give it all to charity.)

  

Embassies:

  

Some are needed. Some are a stretch.

The Kabul embassy is renovating to the tune of $24 million for a place we will be out of in 2011 and which, if bears do you-know-what in the forest, will soon after fall back to the Taliban.

  

And the embassies we can use are not exactly Spartan. You just paid for remodeling the Berlin embassy for $180 million dollars. 

  

An average embassy operating budget runs about $5 million a year. So what are we doing in Bangladesh, Brunei, Ivory Coast, El Salvador, Ghana, Guyana, Kuwait and my favourite: the Vatican? Are we afraid that a wandering Canadian may be wrongly arrested by the Pope’s KGB? 

  

Price waste, my personal estimate: 40 million per year, easy.

  

And all of the above is just federal waste. We have it at all repeated at provincial and municipal management levels.

   Right under our noses, Mayor Tremblay wants to cut $155 million in essential services. eg. $21.45 million being scraped off police and firemen’s budgets alone.

Meanwhile, his recent stupid splurges include: $487,000 for a jellybean logo, $8 million lost in computer consulting contract fraud, the sale of east end land valued at $31 million to a favoured developer for $4.4 million, don’t get me started.

  

Mr.T says, “There’s a limit on what we can do as far as expenses are concerned.” 

  

Really?...

  

In addition to the Communaute Metropolitaine de Montreal (CMM) and the 82 city councils, there are two agglomeration councils, 12 municipal regions and counties, five provincial administrative regions and 19 boroughs pretty much making the word “redundancy” redundant. You have bourgeois lifestyle ombudsmen you can’t get a hold of and neighbourly city councilors who field the same questions from us while the bureaucrats enjoy their extended lunches.

  

Not to worry, Mr.T will recoup some more bread by charging you $75 for personal vehicle tax and taxes on backyard pools, and fees on public spaces and eventually a breathing tax.

  

Meanwhile, Quebec is the queen of Heaviest Loaded Civil Service per Capita in North America.

  

In 1984, New Zealand elected a free-market oriented labour government  and fired 55% of the government work force and refused to print money to save inefficient companies (can you say Chrysler and GM?) from bankruptcy. What followed was nine consecutive years of budget surpluses and an entrepreneurial economy that rose by 5.8 percent.

  

All this inequity resonates with what was recently said by United Church moderator Rev.David Giuliano:  “Let’s be clear that the needs of the hungry children, homeless families and the working poor supersedes the demands of unfettered commerce.” He referred to the current economic turmoil as a “crumbling pyramid scheme that rewards those at the top and devours everyone and everything below.”

  

He asked governments to take this opportunity to create a new reality, a fairer society. As citizens, we should be outraged but being Canadian, we’re not.

  

What can you do?

  

Get off Facebook, You-Tube, Google and Yahoo, and write your local politicians municipal, provincial and  federal. Write to your local newspaper letters page. Write until you have Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. Vote for any party but the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Bloc or don’t vote at all.

 Shake the system and keep shaking until these ying-yangs listen or better still are all replaced by ethical and moral managers. You know...normal people like us.