But

“Mail call will be welcomed by those inmates serving less than 90 days in provincial correctional facilities, as they are the only convicts eligible for the payments.”

Ok. That seems fine. Tax adjustments shouldn’t apply to inmates? So if an inmate has an income while in prison, and tax rates are increased for his tax bracket, he shouldn’t pay the increased rate?

I’m not that dense, I realize that considering the cheque literally as a bribe means why let criminal offenders benefit from a bribe, but of course it’s not actually a bribe. It’s a bit of money to say “Look, prices won’t come down overnight after businesses start seeing the benefits of HST, so in the meantime here’s a bit of cash to smooth things out.” People in prison for less than 90 days will certainly need that sort of help. And that’s fine.

It’s not a matter of why should they as in why would they feel any moral compunction to do so, but a matter of that’s just how competition works. Unless you have mass price fixing, eventually someone says “Hey, it’s costing me a bit less to produce my crap, so I’m going to lower my costs a bit to beat out my competition,” and then the competition does the same thing and so on and so forth until prices come down.

I just came across it here.

Copied here:

(Without having a link to a specific instance, what I was talking about is the kind of crap nobody likes to see the other side doing, just restating the party line.)

Benen notes, “the new health care law in the United States creates a system that isn’t similar to the Canadian system at all, so condemning the Affordable Care Act by pointing to Canadian budget problems doesn’t make sense.”

Yes. But even if it is similar, it’s still better than no system at all.

Yes. But even the underlying premise that something that needs work is something that shouldn’t exist, is completely stupid. When brakes go in a car, you get new brakes, you don’t say “Ha! Told you cars were a bad idea!” Because you’d sound like an idiot. Because you would, in fact, be an idiot. Conservatives are idiots.

Comparing the G8 and G20 to another G8 doesn’t make any sense.

If the 2002 G8 was $190 million, and the G20 is equal to the G8*20/8, then the combined expense would be expected to be $665 million. Which is a stupid calculation. But that’s what you get when you start with a stupid comparison.

I’m not saying the spending isn’t ridiculous, I’m just saying poor comparisons are no way to support that ridiculousness.

While we’re just picking numbers out of hats.

I’m thinking at least half of Rossi’s jobs have to be imaginary. That is, they’ll exist in his mind, but nobody will be doing them.

First off, I’m not sure where 9.6% comes from, but that’s fine. That may be the number for the actual city of Toronto. But then there aren’t 250,000 people looking for work in actual Toronto.

The article notes that “Rossi did not explain the formula he used . . . to come up with the 250,000 figure.”

OPTION ONE
Take population of Toronto (somewhere a bit over 2,500,000), multiply by apparent unemployment rate (9.6%), round up, equals 250,000. Which is patently ridiculous (a. it’s impossible to create a job for every single unemployed person, b. there aren’t actually 250,000 unemployed people in Toronto because at any given time about a third of the population (kids, retired people, the hopeless) aren’t looking for jobs). Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

Unless… OPTION TWO
Forget about just Toronto. Consider the Toronto CMA. This includes Ajax, Aurora, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Brampton, Caledon, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, Halton Hills, King, Markham, Milton, Mississauga, Mono, New Tecumseth, Newmarket, Oakville, Orangeville, Pickering, Richmond Hill, Toronto, Uxbridge, Vaughan, Whitchurch-Stouffville. (NB: Most of these places are not voting for the mayor of Toronto.) Here there are a shade over 300,000 people looking for work. Create a job for 80% of them, equals 250,000. Of course, this would reduce the unemployment rate to about 2%. Which is economically impossible. Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

Unless… OPTION THREE
What he’s really thinking is that his policies will create jobs throughout all of Ontario. In this case there are say, generously, 650,000 people looking for work. Figure you can make jobs for about 40% of them, equals 250,000. Of course, this would reduce the provincial unemployment rate to 5.5%. Which would be well below where it’s ever been before. Therefore, Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

CONCLUSION
Rocco Rossi is ridiculous.

So let’s call that “baseline stupid.” Anything other than “Sure, here are the records” is going to be at least baseline stupid. And then there’s the next level:

“She is an employee of the house,” Liberal MP Scott Andrews said. “We appoint her. So why would she audit the people who appoint her?”

Oh god.

The thing with music theft is people keep making it anyhow. The argument for strong intellectual property rights is primarily that without those rights people wouldn’t bother to innovate/invent/produce. And that’s probably true, generally. I don’t imagine Pfizer saying “That’s fine, even though everything we make is stolen we’ll continue investing billions in medical research.” But that’s apparently exactly what happens with music.

It’s not that “musicians in particular should be giving their music away for no cost” (emphasis mine), it’s that they do. Not intentionally of course (well, not usually), but they know while making music that it will be stolen in large quantities. Yet they keep doing it.

That said, what I personally support is something like an “Artistic Freedom Voucher.” Or full paper here.

Last year Diane Ablonczy had responsibility for this sort of funding removed after supporting Pride. This removal immediately on the heels of announcing Pride funding was too unlikely to be a coincidence, meaning this was obviously a political issue for the Conservatives. They didn’t want to alienate their social conservatives supporters, and it’s easy to alienate such people when they see people not like them receiving $400,000.

If there had been no such issue last year, this year’s rationale may have to fall into the “Well, fine, I guess that’s reasonable enough” category. But given that this is obviously an issue for the Conservatives, this year’s rationale instead falls into the “bullshit” category. This is simply a governing reactionary party’s abuse of a minority group.

From the Star article:

“Last year, Clement said the lion’s share of the marquee program’s funding went to large urban centres, particularly Toronto and Montreal. This year, the major cities were limited to two successful applications, allowing the government to spread the largesse around to smaller centres across the country.”

A dollar spent attracting someone to Toronto or Montreal is going to do a lot more than a dollar spent trying to get someone to visit some small town (I don’t want to pick anywhere specific). Toronto and Montreal are cities people look for a reason to visit. People already know they can go to those cities for world class theatre, galleries, restaurants, sporting events, night clubs, concerts, whatever. So they wait until they think “Hey, why don’t we go for [Pride, Luminato, etc.].” That’s the axis around which their trip will orbit, but it’s far from where they’ll spend all their time. In hypothetical small town, that doesn’t exist.