Ugh. Clutter. I've driven I-75 many times, and it's not attractive at all to have all those signs. Although I guess he has to pay for the license plate fiasco.
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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario
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AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
If we wanted to be like the US, we would have become part of it a few hundred years ago.
AoD
DSC
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From Star:
Tories say it is ‘ludicrous’ to remove Toronto police officer from rights watchdog over conflict of interest concerns
Well, of course. If the INDEPENDENT Integrity Commissioner thinks it was a bad idea to appoint him, it MUST have been the bestest idea ever (since the Tory blue licence plates.
www.thestar.com
Tories say it is ‘ludicrous’ to remove Toronto police officer from rights watchdog over conflict of interest concerns
Well, of course. If the INDEPENDENT Integrity Commissioner thinks it was a bad idea to appoint him, it MUST have been the bestest idea ever (since the Tory blue licence plates.
Tories say it is ‘ludicrous’ to remove Toronto police officer from rights watchdog over conflict of interest concerns
Attorney General Doug Downey is dismissing the integrity commissioner’s concerns over the Progressive Conservatives’ appointment of an active-duty Toronto police officer to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
www.thestar.com
zang
Senior Member
Except you ignore that the vast majority of Canadian provinces have natural resource based economies. Ontario does not. Ontario will always suffer more in recessions.
Repeat after me: Cherry picked data and false comparisons do not a legitimate argument make.
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W. K. Lis
Superstar
Meanwhile, a reference to Chicago, where Doug Ford opened a branch of Deco Labels. Wonder if Doug got some ideas about education from his stay in Chicago...
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
Double-blue licence plate snafu broke his heart, Premier Doug Ford says
Insiders said the premier was personally involved in choosing the illegible double-blue licence plate that now needs to be replaced.
www.thestar.com
Great news - he has one! Who'd knew license plates can be such tear-jerkers.
AoD
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Cutting services to the most vulnerable doesn't break his heart, but a cold blue piece of metal does. That says a lot.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
Such a tool.Double-blue licence plate snafu broke his heart, Premier Doug Ford says
Insiders said the premier was personally involved in choosing the illegible double-blue licence plate that now needs to be replaced.
Great news - he has one! Who'd knew license plates can be such tear-jerkers.
AoD
Outline.com
outline.com
"The Tories say 3M is footing the tab for the fix. A nondisclosure agreement has been signed between the company and the government concealing the actual cost."
This is such a lie. 3M made what was requested. They'll just hide the cost of the plates in future orders of stop signs.
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W. K. Lis
Superstar
The Myth of the Fiscal Conservative
Austerity measures don't actually save money. But they do disempower workers. Which is why governments pursue them in the first place.
From link.
Austerity measures don't actually save money. But they do disempower workers. Which is why governments pursue them in the first place.
From link.
The thinking behind “fiscal conservatism” and austerity measures holds that government programs are inefficient, so we should aim to curtail government spending, privatize government assets, and lower taxes. We are told that ending homelessness, providing universal early childcare, healthcare, or higher education are unrealistic policies that would require spending far beyond our means.
In reality, though, the arguments made by the fiscal conservatives — saving money, efficiency, less government spending — don’t align with the policies they are trying to implement. Fiscal conservatism is a myth, because cutting government programs doesn’t actually reduce government spending.
There is a well-known theory of economics related to us by Terry Pratchett in his book Men at Arms, through a character named Vimes. The theory is basically that being poor is more expensive than being rich.
Take boots, for example. [Vimes] earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was … on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
Fiscal conservatism is trying to get us to buy the cheap boots — and doing so causes us to spend more money than if we had just bought the good boots in the first place.
Many social programs that fiscal conservatives advocate cutting have been shown to actually save the government money in the long run.
Let’s take providing affordable housing and adequate shelters in order to end homelessness as an example. In the rare moments such policies are even discussed, we are told that public affordable housing provision and shelters are too expensive to be feasible.
But academic research has shown that homelessness is actually very expensive, because homeless people tend to cost the government a great deal of money in healthcare and criminal justice system services. In fact, people experiencing homelessness tend to cost $3,810 per person per year greater than the average citizen in terms of justice services and $10,217 per person greater than the average citizen in terms of healthcare services. The cost of homelessness support programs range from a couple thousand dollars to just over $14,000 per person annually.
Set aside any moral obligation we might have to help the homeless — failing to meaningfully address homelessness is the more costly policy. We simply cannot afford austerity.
The same logic applies to universal early childcare. While fiscal conservatives tell us that we cannot afford quality universal early childcare, the truth is that we can’t afford not to have it.
Economic data shows us that providing universal early childcare actually saves the government money. This is because without it, childcare becomes so expensive that many parents face the impossible choice between working during the day or taking care of their child. One parent (disproportionately mothers) will often need to stay home and take care of the child. If that person is a single parent, they may have to go on welfare.
By providing universal early childcare, the government allows more parents to enter the labor force, get off of welfare, and generate taxable income. While the childcare program in Quebec is far from perfect, it has become clear that for “every dollar [they] invest, they recoup $1.05.”
There are a litany of similar cases: why does every state spend more money per inmate than they do per student? Programs that keep people out of prison by giving them the social support they need cost far less than prison, but fiscal conservatives are always telling us to live within our means. Spending on social programs also creates more economic growth than tax cuts for the wealthy, because lower-income people are more likely to spend their money (generating a ripple effect of growth), whereas wealthy people just put their money in the bank, taking it out of circulation in the economy.
Supporting social programs reduces government spending in the long run. Nevertheless, fiscal conservatives and neoliberals continue to insist on implementing austerity policies that harm us all.
This isn’t because they aren’t aware of how social spending budget cuts shake out over the long term. They’re less concerned with which policies are ideologically consistent or financially sound, and more concerned with preventing the kind of redistribution of wealth and power from the top to the bottom which increased social spending provides.
If it costs a bit more over time to structure budgets this way, so be it: spending extra on pair after pair of cheap shoes is worth it if the shoes are so shoddy that the working class can’t kick your ass with them.
WislaHD
Superstar
I am not sure if quoting Jacobin magazine is going to convince anyone who is not already left of centre anything about fiscal conservativism.
That being said, it is a lie to call neoliberals as fiscal conservatives. True fiscal conservatives spend money when they see return on investment, as when Bill Davis invested in Ontario's infrastructure, highways, transit, school system, healthcare system, and social services. Mike Harris and Douglas Ford in comparison were not fiscal conservatives, but rather austerity nuts, one driven by the neoliberal Reaganist ideology of the day, the other by petty and divisive contrarianism.
We haven't seen genuine fiscal conservatives provincially for some time, though many leaders of the PC party have tried their best to convince the electorate of their fiscal conservative qualities.
That being said, it is a lie to call neoliberals as fiscal conservatives. True fiscal conservatives spend money when they see return on investment, as when Bill Davis invested in Ontario's infrastructure, highways, transit, school system, healthcare system, and social services. Mike Harris and Douglas Ford in comparison were not fiscal conservatives, but rather austerity nuts, one driven by the neoliberal Reaganist ideology of the day, the other by petty and divisive contrarianism.
We haven't seen genuine fiscal conservatives provincially for some time, though many leaders of the PC party have tried their best to convince the electorate of their fiscal conservative qualities.
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Oh goody! Just what we need
The Progressive Conservatives are planning to allow dozens of new electronic billboards on Metrolinx rail lands in Toronto and other major centres, the Star has learned.
One day after Premier Doug Ford mused about installing billboards on 400-series highways to raise money for provincial coffers, Metrolinx quietly posted an “expression of interest” (EOI) seeking potential bids for urban advertising signage.
The provincial transit agency’s posting on MERX’s public tendering website appeared Tuesday.
“Metrolinx invites entities to submit proposals for the design, construction, management and maintenance of digital sign structures at specific locations along Metrolinx-owned lands including within the rail corridor and on station properties in order to generate revenue,” it reads.
“Proponents may submit a proposal to construct digital billboards on one or more locations. The selected proponents will be required to enter into lease agreements with Metrolinx related to the construction and operation of the digital billboards.”
Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney’s office said Wednesday the Metrolinx pitch is “a separate initiative than the potential 400-series plans referenced by the premier.”
“There is a list of 66 potential properties included in the EOI and they include both station properties and sites within rail corridors,” Mulroney’s office said in an email.
“This list does not include any properties along 400-series highways.”
From Star at: https://www.thestar.com/politics/pr...ronic-billboards-on-metrolinx-rail-lands.html
The Progressive Conservatives are planning to allow dozens of new electronic billboards on Metrolinx rail lands in Toronto and other major centres, the Star has learned.
One day after Premier Doug Ford mused about installing billboards on 400-series highways to raise money for provincial coffers, Metrolinx quietly posted an “expression of interest” (EOI) seeking potential bids for urban advertising signage.
The provincial transit agency’s posting on MERX’s public tendering website appeared Tuesday.
“Metrolinx invites entities to submit proposals for the design, construction, management and maintenance of digital sign structures at specific locations along Metrolinx-owned lands including within the rail corridor and on station properties in order to generate revenue,” it reads.
“Proponents may submit a proposal to construct digital billboards on one or more locations. The selected proponents will be required to enter into lease agreements with Metrolinx related to the construction and operation of the digital billboards.”
Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney’s office said Wednesday the Metrolinx pitch is “a separate initiative than the potential 400-series plans referenced by the premier.”
“There is a list of 66 potential properties included in the EOI and they include both station properties and sites within rail corridors,” Mulroney’s office said in an email.
“This list does not include any properties along 400-series highways.”
From Star at: https://www.thestar.com/politics/pr...ronic-billboards-on-metrolinx-rail-lands.html
APTA-2048
Senior Member
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
I wonder if this is about the bucks, or giving a sweetheart deal to the billboard companies (the latter have a tendency to umm...get into things.)
AoD
lenaitch
Senior Member
If they are going to be anything like the high-def pixelboard signs they allowed a couple of FNs install on Hwy 400 north or Port Severn and Parry Sound they can shove the idea (actually, they can shove the idea in of any format). They are highly distracting. The last thing we should be trying to emulate is roadscape of the US Interstates.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
On the bright side, this government opened the can of worms that is retroactive legislation - a tool I would suggest his successors take to heart.
AoD