Ontario’s illegal ‘eco-tax’ scrapped and ‘under review’

Last Saturday, there was a protest at Premier Dalton McGuinty’s constituency office.  Yes, even his brother, David McGiunty (a federal MP for this part of Ottawa) showed up at the protest!

The protest was sparked by a totally evil thing the McGuinty Liberals have done:  on the same day that prices went up because of the introduction of HST (no problem with the ‘what’ of the HST, but rather the ‘how’ – it was imposed on tons of products previously tax exempt – an unelected agency of the Ontario Government, whose board of directors is composed of ‘industry partners’, imposed an ‘eco-fee’ on  over 8 thousand  new items…

I say ‘new items’, because this ‘eco-fee/eco-tax’ had first been introduced in 2008:  but so quietly, on not that many items, and not so high…..so nobody really ‘noticed’ it.  Having ‘established’ this method and legitimized it (no protests were seen against it), the McGuinty Liberals then cynically decided that the danger was ‘past’ and they can begin to ‘tighten the screws’.

This is an important pattern we must be aware of:  a government – any government – can introduce some measure.  Perhaps this measure is not really noticed (like this ‘Stewardship Ontario’ program – not to be confused with a completely different and unrelated government initiative called ‘Ontario Stewardship’), or perhaps it is even applauded by the populace because it appears to remove a perceived (rightly or wrongly perceived) threat (like, say, banning the full Islamic facial veil).  Once the measure and the method has been ‘accepted’ and ‘normalized’, the government can then expand on it:  using this new ‘tool’ to their own benefit.  If anyone speaks out – they can claim this is ‘the accepted way of doing things’!

That is why we need to really really examine not just the ‘what’ of each thing a government does, of each new law passed, but perhaps even more importantly – the ‘how’ of it!    But, I am off on a tangent….sorry, I have the attention span of a gnat!

Today, the Ontario Environment Minister announced that the ‘eco-fees’ are ‘scrapped’.

Not exactly ‘gone‘….

Just their current format is ‘scrapped’.

For now, the Ontario Government will take 3 months to ‘study’ the issue – and pay five million dollars from general revenue over the next 3 months to maintain the programs while it tries to figure out another way to  stick us with the bill.

Bob Chiarelli, the Ontario Government’s Communication Minister (and thus the guy who ought to have told us about this), has openly claimed in both the press and radio interviews that ‘NONE of the money collected through the eco-fees  goes to GOVERNMENT’ – yet we are now told that programs like the ‘Blue Box recycling’, which we have been told are paid from our municipal property taxes and their cost used as a justification to raise the municipal taxes, well, we are now being told these programs are being 100% paid for through the eco-fees!

So – which is it?

Are we paying for recycling programs through our property taxes – as our municipal politicians are telling us – or are we paying for it through this eco-fee?  One level of government or the other has GOT to be lying!

But, I am off on a tangent again…

What is important – really important – about this ‘eco-fee’ is the HOW of it all…

Ontario Government had – ages ago –  created ‘Stewardship Ontario’ with a board of ‘industry partners’ to work on these recycling initiatives.   The idea was that since industry is producing the things which need to be diverted from garbage dumps, they ought to be consulted on ways to deal with diverting ‘stuff’ from the dumps.  We were told it was supposed to be a sort of a ‘think tank’ type thing.

The Board of Directors of Stewardship Ontario is  truly made up of ‘industry giants’:  from McCain Foods and Canadian Tire Corp. to Procter & Gamble and Loblaw Companies Ltd. …

So, this ‘arms-length’ organization, with a BOD made up entirely of ‘industry partners’ (read ‘big business corporations’) is given power, by the government, to tax citizens!!!

What is the definition of fascism?

Ah – fascism is DEFINED as  ‘the collusion of big government and big business’!!!

How much more ‘collusion’ can there be between ‘big government’ and ‘big business’ than for the government to give the big business the ability to levy taxes (which is what non-voluntary fees are) on the citizens?!?!?!?

Ontario taxpayers have seen some serious money mismanagement in the past.  The ‘e-Health’ scandal has been a billion-dollar program that funneled money from the woefully broke medical system to ‘advisers’ who were not just highly overpaid McGuinty cronies, they also provided exactly zero value for their services….

Now, Lisa McLeod, an opposition MPP, has revealed during a radio interview that some of these same e-Health consultants are also ‘consulting’ for Stewardship Ontario…

Please, think of this:  the very sleazy skum-buckets  who claimed the Ontario Government is not the one who imposed these ‘fees’ have had no problem ‘scrapping them’…because now, the Ontario Government is taking credit for ‘scrapping’ them.

And, in 3 month’s time, they hope to have figured out another way to weasel the money out of us!

Even more photos from the McGuinty eco-tax protest in Ottawa

Some of the photos are posted here.

Still, there were some excellent signs I didn’t get ‘in there’.  So, here are more photos:

Dalton McGrinchy

Dalton McGrinchy

Photos from ‘McGuinty eco-tax’ protest, Ottawa

Today, a crowd of several hundred people had gathered in front of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s constituency office to protest the illegal taxes he has imposed on Ontario taxpayers, disguised as ‘eco-fees’.

The photos speak for themselves:

There was a visible – put very polite and respectful police presence.  Their only concern seemed to be that nobody got run over by the many cars driving by (and mostly honking).  One could not help but get the impression that they kind of agreed with the protesters!

The above picture is across the street from Dalton McGuilty’s office – the parking lot in the ratty-little strip mall where he has his office was too small to hold the protest, so it spilled across the street (no sidewalk there) and even into the near side street!

Dalton McGrinchy himself made an appearance!

With his trusty ECO-VAC, he was vacuuming everyone’s money!

The  reporters/media just LOVED  Dalton McGrinchy!

OK – I am a really really bad reporter – I don’t even know the names of the people who organized it , or most of the speakers.  However, I did recognize CFRA’s popular Rob Snow, who really got the crowd whipped up!

By this point, it had begun to rain – a little.

Then, somebody (OK, Jessica) made a discovery:  David McGuinty, Dalton’s brother and a Liberal MP for this riding, was sitting in his car in the parking lot!

While we all concluded that even Dalton’s brother supports this protest, once his identity had been revealed, he drove away bravely.  Due to the rain, the picture I got turned out too foggy to use…  Sorry!

Anyhow…

It was quite a crowd:  young and old and in-between!

Dalton McGuinty was unavailable for comment:  rather than coming to the protest and facing the music, he chose to go on holiday….on our dime!

Update:  even more photos.

Protest against Onario’s illegal eco-tax: Saturday, 17. July 2010

UPDATE: here are photos from the demonstration

When:  Saturday, 17th of July, 2010, 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm

Where:  Premier Dalton McGinty’s Ottawa office at 1795 Infanticide Kilborn Ave.

1st of July, 2010, Ontario ‘harmonized’ the collection of its sales tax with the federal Goods and Services tax.  That, in itself, is not a problem.  (Please consider this to be a pragmatic statement assessing the current situation, not the underlying principles – I’ll rant on that separately.)

Again, this was a question of ‘how’, not ‘what’…

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty turned it into a major tax grab by applying the combined tax onto a whole slew of items not previously taxed by the Province’s sales tax.  People did not like it – but, realizing there was not much they could do to stop it (most people I know think McGuinty is so corrupt, if they even spoke up they might be putting themselves into danger).

So, everybody braced him or her self for the upwards jump in taxes.

And did the prices ever  jump up!!!

Except that…

Without actually telling anyone anything about it, the Ontario government ‘snuck in’ a whole new way to steal money from us!!!

It was so secretive about this that it failed to mention anything to the citizens.  It also did not let any info leak out to the opposition parties – it did not even tell some of the elected MPPs on the government side!

How?

There is an ‘agency’ called Stewardship Ontario – not to be confused with the Ontario Government’s Ontario Stewardship, that’s a popular and completely unrelated thing – that ‘imposed eco-fees’ on toxic products to make sure that if they got into the garbage system, they’d be take care of ‘properly’.

I suspect this ‘waste diversion’ program is based on the idea that if they tax us into poverty, we’ll buy less stuff and so there will not be as much garbage…

As of 1st of July, prices went up because somewhere between 9 an 10 thousand items now have this ‘eco-fee’ stuck on!

A man buying needles for his diabetic wife used to pay $60 for a certain amount.  After the ‘eco-fee’ was applied, he had to pay $190…

People from various areas of the province have reported that a $4 bag of cement now has $3.90 eco-fee…

All medications now have an eco-fee.

And other ‘toxic’ substances we need to protect ourselves from by tacking this eco-fee in it – I kid you not – a paper bag of grass seed!

Stewardship Ontario even urges retailers to hide the eco-fee in the price of the product instead of showing it on the bill!

Do these people think we are total idiots?  Or are they relying on our fear to keep us cowed?

To add insult  to injury:  Bob Chiarelli, our past mayor (and, in my never-humble-opinion, one of the most dangerous men in the Ottawa area) has told us this is the fault of (!) Mike Harris.  He also claims NONE of this money goes to the government….except that it does – municipal governments are already complaining that they are being short-changed in their kick-backs on this.

And the official line from the Ontario government?

The manufacturers and retilers do not HAVE TO charge their consumers – they CAN just absorb the cost themselves…

There is more that needs to be said, but I’d better wrap this up because I’m just getting too mad.

Let me just urge you:  if you are going to be in Ottawa, and you don’t like this illegal tax, and you can – go to the protest.

“Peole who walk are easier to rule”

OK – I did not look up the quote exactly:  if I picked up the book, I’d end up reading it (again) instead of writing this post…  Still, the sentiment is expressed accurately.

The speaker was Leto, the millennia old,  human-half-morphed-into-The-Worm God Emperor of  Dune in Frank Herbert‘s most illuminating books on human nature.  This tyrant (who only did things ‘for the good of his people’) ruled with an iron fist.  Part of the method which he used to maintain control over the population was by controlling all means of transportation except for walking/jogging.

Leto controlled all the vehicles, in the air and on the ground.  At one point, he explained that the reason for this was that a population that walks is easier to rule.

Now, let me digress to my childhood ‘behind the iron curtain’… I’ll connect it up, I promise!

The defining thing, the one aspect of life that took up almost all the ‘free time’ of most of the people I remember from my childhood, was ‘supply logistics’.

First of all, I did not know any family – not a single one – where there was a ‘stay-at-home-parent’.

The socialist state instilled, as the most supreme of all ‘human rights’, ‘the right to work‘.  This meant that every single person had a right to a job.  Zero unemployment! Nobody starving on the street!  Heaven on Earth!

Of course, nobody was permitted to ‘opt out’ from this ‘right’.  After all, The State could not appear to be failing anyone in upholding this ‘human right’!

The upshot of this was that, whether a parent wanted (or could afford to – the economic reality would have made this very, very difficult) to stay at home longer than the permitted 6-month maternity leave, their ‘right to work’ trumped their wishes and they had to go off to ‘a job’.

After a full day of work, one had to find a way to buy necessities of life: from food to toothpaste and toilet paper.  Because everyone walked to shops, or took public transit, shopping for food for a week’s worth of ‘stuff’ at one time (as is the norm in  North America) was not an option:  even if you could carry it all home in your two hands (often walking up many stories in apartment buildings where elevators either did not exist or did not work), there would not be enough room in your tiny fridge and ‘compact’ kitchen for all that much. So, ‘food gathering’ was a daily task.

It had to be planned well – the shops were not open in the evenings, so one had to rush off straight from work to the bus, so one could get to the store on the other side of town which had supposedly got a shipment of toothpaste.  Or to that clothing store that  got white/yellow t-shirts which were the required gym uniform for the kids, but of which there was constantly a shortage .

And you had to leave yourself enough time to make it to at least 2-3  stores:  even though milk and bread were usually available, they weren’t always…  And that does not even touch on the meat situation…

An average woman could expect to spend at least 2 hours a day ‘shopping’ – running from one place to another, standing in one queue after another, just to keep the household supplied with food and soap…  This was true of ‘everything’:  many men spent a lot of their time trying to find supplies and professionals who’d help with any household repairs or renovations, car care, and so on…

Plus people had to try and have a supply of luxury items, like, say, packages of ‘Western’ coffee: one had to bring these when one went to see a dentist or a doctor or any other kind of ‘professional’.  Needless to say, much of people’s ‘private’ conversations were about what one could find where, when.

This did not leave most people much time or energy for ‘political unrest’….

Which was the point!

Some of the shortages were real – but others were completely artificial:  an item of which there was a shortage in one area was temporarily over-supplied in another.  This was actually very, very clever:  not only did it keep most of the people too busy to want do anything about the political system, it gave them a chance to ‘succeed’ – and to feel the satisfaction that comes from succeeding!

OK – it may seem petty to us.  But, after a while of living in a system where necessities are not easily obtainable, people quickly begin to derive their self-worth from how good a ‘gather’ they are!

This makes sense:  humans started out as hunters and gatherers.  It is only natural that giving people these daily obstacles to overcome, giving them the opportunity to have these little successes over and over and over, makes the population relatively docile. In this type of a society, it is only if the shortages are too big and numerous and the majority of the people is denied the warm feelings they get from overcoming these daily ‘little obstacles’ that the population is likely to turn militant.

That is human nature.

So, what does that have to do with ‘people who walk’?

Driving from one place to another is too easy:  it does not take anywhere near as much time as trying to take public transit (and to bring your shopping back home on crowded public transit), it also takes much more physical energy to walk than it does to drive.  Living like this, people don’t have time or energy to do much more than grumble about ‘the system’…

Plus, it is the government who controls the public transportation systems:  if you want to stop a lot of people getting to a specific place to protest, just delay all the trains coming into town that day.  Or, cancel the bus runs that day.   Let’s see how many people will show up at the demonstration, when most are stuck in ‘in between stations’!

Let’s face it:  having control of one’s mobility enables one’s independence!

Which brings me to my actual point:

What are the ‘carbon caps’ focusing on?

If you follow all the ‘recommendations’ of the UN and their warm mongers, what kind of public policies flow out of them?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT = GOOD

PERSONAL VEHICLES = BAD

Now, more than ever, we are bombarded almost daily with more and more evidence that the IPCC recommendations are not founded on any scientific observations but are 100% top-down policy driven.  Today, one of the top IPCC people (a prof of climate studies at East Anglia, none-the-less) published a paper that claims there was NEVER a consensus of thousands (or even hundreds) of scientists behind the IPCC reports!

Of course, those of us interested in the actual science of ‘Global Warming’ and not the politics have been pointing this out for a long time – not that it got much play in the ‘balanced reporting’ by the MSM…

WHY?!?!?

The IPCC report claims a crisis of global proportions – which could only be solved by the establishment of a global governance structure, controlled by the UN.  Now, even as the credibility of those claims is melting away into thin air, the UN is already laying the groundwork for another ‘catastrophe of world proportions’ which can only be brought under control by a world-wide effort – co-ordianted, predictablky enough, by the UN whose appointed committees would have the right to shape all the national governments’ policies…

You’d better get ready for all the new buzzwords!

Oh, and by the way – their suggested ‘solution’ to the artificially induced ‘banking crisis’ is to levy a ‘world tax’ on each and every banking transaction: giving the UN the first direct ‘global taxation’ revenue and powers.

Hey – where is that a ‘Muh-ha-ha!’ sound coming from?

CO2 gives ‘reflected heat’ a ‘cold shoulder’: Knowledge Drift

Interesting post at Knowledge Drift: ‘Longwave seeks hot date; Cold Shoulder from CO2’

“The wheels are falling off the AGW bus. Resignations, papers withdrawn, admissions of fraudulent analysis, bad data, missing data… and now the Institute of Physicists, the Royal Society of Chemists, and the Royal Statistical Society have all provided official submissions to the British Parliament. They are all saying pretty much the same thing. The research done at the CRU doesn’t come anywhere near close to the standards required to be called science.

“The problem with the common explanations of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is that they are both over simplified, and incomplete. For starters, even the term “greenhouse gas” is misleading. …”

From there, it goes into very clear, understandnable explanations of the inconsistencies in the hypothesis of Carbod-doixide forced Global Warming.

It is well worth the read!

Knowledge Drift: Physicist vs. Climatologist

OK – this is funny.

Except that it is so serious.

Still, it is illuminating – and fun!

What an interesting post by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.!

There is very little my commentary could add to this most interesting post!

Systematic Misrepresentation of the Science of Disasters and Climate Change

It was written in June 2009 – long before the infamous CRU emails were published by a whistle-blower. The tone, the exact wording, the  systematic presentation of evidence of the flaws in the IPCC review process and why it is broken.

I had come across it while following a link from his current post about the IPCC knowingly misrepresenting the whole Himalayan glacier melting…

He describes a pattern that is more disturbing than many observers realize:  instead of re-butting, debunking or answering much of the most serious, scientifically supported criticisms directed at the IPCC reports (all of them), the IPCC simply ignores them. Refuses to acknowledge that the criticism was even made….and, since there is no ‘noise’, nobody reports on it….and nobody ever learns of the criticism.  That’s what we get for drawing our journalists from the among ‘social sciences’ majors!

But, back to the Himalayan glacier story: the IPCC’s ‘consensus of the world’s scientists’ that the ‘Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035’ – and which was blindly accepted and repeated by the media – was based on a journalist’s mis-quotation of a scientist, published in a news paper…not a study, not a scientific paper, not peer-reviewed, not published in a scientific journal….  Just a single mis-quotation of a single scientist, by a single reporter, in a non-scientific publication….

What is worse, Dr. Pielke Jr. points out, the error was reported within the frame of the IPCC review, prior to publication, by scientists who were IPCC reviewers,  but it was not corrected.  It was just ignored.  And, despite this, the IPCC’s lead scientist, Dr. Ragendra Pachauri (reportedly soon to beat out Al Gore to become the world’s first ‘carbon-cap-trading billionaire’), vigorously defended the ‘Himalayan glacier melt’ claim as ‘scientific consensus’ even recently….

Dr. Pielke Jr. correctly points out:  either Dr. Pachauri knew about this mistake, or he did not.  Given the evidence Dr. Pirlke Jr. presents, it is hard to say which is worse…

Update:  fixed a broken link – thanks.

UPDATE:  MORE ON THIS FROM ‘THE REFERENCE FRAME’, AND DR. ROGER PIELKE JR.’S BLOG HERE, HERE the IPCC statement….and from Watts Up With That.the skeptical blogosphere is abuzz…

Why is CRU hiding its data?

Oh my….

The now infamous emails demonstrated that the CRU scientist said they’d rather destroy data than release it under Freedom of Information Act requests, so other scientists could check their work.

Some data was, indeed, ‘accidentally lost’.

Now, ALL their data and articles have been pulled off their site!

All the info on the Briffa tree ring reconstruction – all gone.

All the publications – all gone.

WHY?

What in the world is going on?

HT: NewsBusters, WattsUpWithThat

‘Medieval Warm Period’: why do warm-mongers ‘have to get rid of it’?

While reading through the ClimateGate documents, I noticed that the ‘scientists’ paid some serious attention to the ‘Medieval Warm Period’(MWP).

Specifically, it worried them – we’ve known that since 2006, when one of them openly stated “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”.

They did not like it.

They wanted to get rid of it.

And rid of it they got!

The second IPCC report (1995/6) showed that the Middle Ages were several degrees (about 3) warmer than the global temperatures are today.

The third IPCC report (2001) DID NOT!!!  It replaced the graph with the now infamously debunked ‘hockey stick graph’… and claimed the 1990’s were by far the warmest period ever.

WHY?

At first, I thought that the reason was the obvious thing:  if things were that warm during 800 – 1 000 years ago, then it would be hard to panic people into giving them tons of research money now.

Then, I thought back to Al Gore’s instructive little movie…  What was the most iconographic image in it?

Al Gore’s big shiny graph which showed how temperature and carbon dioxide are linked!  Here was the proof that more CO2 means higher temperatures!!!

And, our CO2 IS going up.  Measurably.

Except that the temperature goes up first, then, about 800 or so years later (this period varies by a few centuries either way, but, roughly, it has about an 800 year lag) the carbon dioxide goes up!

It is hard to see this lag on Mr. Gore’s graph, because the two curves are separated out.  But, if one superimposes them on the same time-line, it is clear to see that the temperature goes up first and the CO2 goes up (about 800 years or so) later…

Not only does the CO2 go up, the graph shows that it can spike up very quickly!  The pattern shows a slow decline, followed by a sharp, ‘sudden’ rise.

WHEN was that Medieal Warm Period?  The one during which the temperatures shot up?

800-1300 C.E.?

Hey, that is somewhere between 700 and 1 200 years ago.

How long is the lag again?

800 years, plus or minus a couple centuries either way…

Doesn’t that mean that – just about NOW – we should be expecting the CO2 levels to spike up?

Way up?

How come we never hear about that?

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