Are we in the Major Leagues-YET?
2011/07/08 Leave a comment
/…if there’s a more pathetic group of professional athletes than the Blue Jays bullpen, I can’t think of one!
In Cleveland, another incredibly inept performance. Leading 4-nothing in the bottom of the 9th, two of the pathetic
bullpen crew managed to give up four hits and a walk, including a grand slam. Final score Indians 5, Blue Jays 4!!!!!!
Feel sorry for the starting pitchers, and point some fingers at the New General Manager.
/…Regular gas holding at 128.7 at Shell, PetroCan, Esso, Husky and Sunoco. The gas companies have found a way
to take away the headache that goes with trying to figure out where to buy your gas. This morning the hosing intensifies.
Gas will be up to 131.8, at Shell, Esso, Husky, PetroCan and Sunoco. Prix Fixe has become part of the Oil company lexicon, too!!!!
And where’s the Competition Bureau looking??..at the Toronto Real Estate Board… of course if your chauffeur always fills up, how do you know from gas? Huh?
/…somebody asked about my Air Miles mis-adventure. Did I manage to book the routes I was looking for on the dates I wanted to go?
Yes but NOT on the Air Miles plan…As I said “you can’t get there from here.”-if you’re depending on Air Miles!!!
/…down at City Hall station it looks like the Gravy Train is still operating only the conductor has changed! Taxpayers money continues to fly out the door
faster than it’s coming in. The latest Major offender is Councillor Karen Stintz. She is no match for Gary Webster the TTC General Manager, who is on a spending spree.
She thinks she’s in charge, she’s not! Why isn’t she in charge?….. Because she’s dealing with the TTC>…………………
The TTC is to Rob Ford, what Ontario Hydro is to Flinty Mcguinty– a symbol of excess, profligate in every way, with a nasty culture
that goes with that kind of arrogance and assumed entitlement!!*******************
/…hoohohold the phone. The Competition Bureau has stirred!!! Of course it’s taken the Bureau, three years to flesh out the problem.
But the fact is, it has fined Bell Canada, slightly more than 10-million dollars
for what the Bureau calls Bell’s misleading pricing for its wireless, broadband, phone, and satellite TV services–and that’s the ringer….
misleading the public with not just one product but everything it sells. Another FATCAT with excess and entitlement problems.
…………never thought I’d see the day ROGER’S would be relegated to second among companies consumers love to hate. Roger’s by the way is also looking at a 10-million dollar fine
just hasn’t happened yet.
/…Is this anyway to do business? Misleading is lying! Do you really have to be a liar to become BIG and SUCCESSFUL?
holidayatlarge 
There’s the Gravy Train!!!!!!
2011/10/05 Leave a comment
/.The Gravy Train that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been looking for EXISTS!!!
It’s as real as he claims but it exists behind impenetrable walls of self-interest and entitlement.
These walls are as real as if they had been constructed of mortar and steel.
And if they could be breached, inside, “on Guard”, watching for intruders hard by the GRAVY TRAIN are the Sacred Cows that have
driven this city’s budget into the red and have every intention of keeping it there.
Independent auditors didn’t find it and because auditors by nature help protect Gravy Trains!
The Gravy Train isn’t about the few million dollars council recently cut from the Budget and Council knows it!
The Gravy Train is the vehicle of the unelected, of the elite.
Self-interest and entitlement bind together the objectives of various city units like:
the fire and police departments, their unions and other city unions that need to maintain their numbers, because Unions have only one
objective-get numbers, increase numbers, maintain numbers. Others who fuel the GRAVY TRAIN are the boards–Zoo, Library and some
City departments-like the out-of-control Water department. When these departments are asked to cut budgets, they ignore the request and
deliver a bigger one.
This year the police department was asked to deliver a 10% decrease, year over year, and delivered a budget showing
a 1.5% increase!
Self Interest and Entitlement also live outside the Units we associate with City departments.
The lobbying for tax dollars to support every conceivable kind of Arts-related endeavour is intense!
The list probably isn’t endless, it just looks like it. So that brings us to the obvious conclusion.
Mayor Rob knows he has not reached the controls of the Gravy Train and he is probably cognizant of this fact–he will not reach
them even if he spent the next forty years in the Mayor’s Chair. There is no one in the city with the political jam, let alone Council support,
who can breach the walls. Furthermore, there is no support among the Media to get to the Gravy Train.
Among the media, the leading excoriator of Mayor Rob’s contention is the Toronto Star.
Almost daily the Star finds some way to ridicule, belittle, denigrate his Worship’s contention that a Gravy Train exists! !
Well we know it exists and now we know where it is–the question is how much money is it carrying—
my guess: between 500 and 700 million dollars.
/…Here’s a quick example. Among the recent decisions of Council looking for those elusive, loose tax dollars was to sell, privatize or come
up with another operating model for the Toronto Zoo. The Zoo loses 11-million dollars a year. One Zoo board member is
Councillor Glenn De Baermaeker. He voted against finding ways to save money and save the Zoo.
He said it was “a desperate and pathetic move.”
The only thing “desperate and pathetic” was De Baermaeker’s solution: keep the Zoo and continue to send the annual 11-million dollar bill
to the TAXPAYER.
He, along with other members of Council, helped build the walls that protect the Gravy Train.
They subscribe to the Neo-Grecian Formula of Collective Penury.
It is real! It is a contagion! And it’s catching!
/…Not offered as issues in this provincial election campaign:
Hey Dalton, where are the 600-thousand jobs that the introduction of the HST was going to bring Ontario?
Hey Horvath, what about your poor, bedraggled Union people who have been fighting the savagery of US Steel?
Hey Hudak, what about Caledonia? This is still a land of Law and Order is it not?
And what about insurance rates and the huge profits churned out by that group of free enterprizers?
And, I almost forgot, what about the Prix Fixe that has been imposed by the even richer oil companies on gas prices
in all the major Ontario cities? Today Toronto residents pay: $5.573396 for a gallon of gas!!
Stateside, the gasoline just dropped again today–next time you’re in Buffalo help yourself to the smaller gallon
for $3.25!! You don’t think we are being jobbed by the Oil Companies–well the politicians didn’t even remember
to bring it up!! They do care! But not for us!
The GRAVY TRAIN is real–
/…AJ/KO
Filed under daily comments, Uncategorized Tagged with De Baermaeker. sacred cows, gravytrain