Corporate Welfare

There is a reason the Conservatives chose not to help with the stadium in Quebec. They stated the reason publicly. It would have singled out only one team. The Conservatives would have loved to give corporate welfare to billionaire sports team owners. It is a fundamental belief and commitment of the conservatives to help the super wealthy by redistributing tax dollars to them. If only the Conservatives could have figured out a way to help all of the super wealthy at one time...Oh! Wait! They did that. It is called tax cuts for the wealthy. In this case the Conservatives did the correct thing for the wrong reason.


On the other hand it is inappropriate for the Liberals to promise to pay for the Quebec stadium. It is clearly a vote getting move aimed at sports fans. It would be a Liberal sell out to big business for votes from sports fans.


The Green Party thinks differently than the traditional, conventional parties.

Toronto's New Bottled Water Sipping Mayor

In 2008 Toronto banned the sale of bottled water at city hall. CBC ran an article with the following title: 

Toronto council approves plastic bag                   charge, bottle ban

Here is a quote from the story:

"Council also voted to ban the sale of water in plastic bottles at City Hall and civic centres. The ban will be extended to other city property by 2011."

The fact that Ford repeatedly sipped bottled water while making his acceptance speech appears hypocritical. At the very least it must make the UN water advisor who previously praised Toronto for it's bottled water ban cringe.

Furthermore, Ford's choice of Don Cherry as a special guest at his swearing in must be very embarrassing to a lot of people in Toronto. Don claims to have worn pink to the event "for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles."

Ford has some good ideas like reducing waste and improving customer service. I hope he can follow through on those ideas. Call me cynical, but I fear it may be a thinly veiled wish to break up unions and privatize utilities in the city.

Nuclear Will Never Be the Clean Alternative

Nuclear energy will NEVER be the "clean alternative" to carbon based energy. It will be consumed in addition to fossil fuels. Humankind will consume both types of energy as fast as is humanly possible unless we drastically change our ways. Investments in alternative energies and reductions in consumption are the correct choice for society, and the Green Party is the party most strongly advocating these changes.

GDP

Sandra Finley says: "GDP is a measure of how quickly we fill our garbage dumps."

Here are a couple alternatives for the acronym GDP (Gross Domestic Product):

1. Gross Disgusting Product
2. Garbage Domestically Produced.

The use of GDP should go to the garbage dump not our resources.

Standard of Living

"Some people mistake the high cost of living with the cost of living high."-Unknown

Anti-Nuclear

When I heard about radiation leaks in Japan caused by the earth quakes I couldn't help think about nuclear power and the storage of high level radioactive waste here in Saskatchewan. The people of Saskatchewan voted overwhelmingly against nuclear in SK, yet the conservative government here seems determined to ram it down our throats.

Below is email text from another Green Party of Saskatchewan candidate:

THE SITUATION IN JAPAN IS STILL SERIOUS

WE WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED

AND ACT NOW TO TELL CONGRESS WE WON'T ACCEPT MORE NUCLEAR POWER IN THE U.S.!

March 11, 2011; 7:00 pm

Dear Friends,

As you can probably imagine, we have been closely monitoring the situation with Japan's nuclear reactors all day, staying in close contact with our colleagues in Japan, trying to separate fact from rumor and providing accurate information to the media, to many, many callers, on Facebook and on our website.

We produced and have updated several times a factsheet on the Fukushima reactors and the ongoing concerns about what appears to be becoming a very serious situation. We will continue updating this factsheet through the evening and weekend as events warrant and we obtain reliable information. This factsheet is available here. We encourage you to use it, check periodically for updates and refer your local media to it.

This serves as a reminder that natural disasters can happen anytime, and when those disasters affect nuclear power reactors, the consequences can be catastrophic. We, of course, hope that such a catastrophe still will be averted in Japan.

This also serves as a reminder of the importance of ending taxpayer loans for new nuclear reactors in the U.S. Every reactor is vulnerable to a wide variety of natural disasters, as well as to operator error and mechanical failure. Even if nuclear reactors were cheap, and they're not, there are better, cleaner and safer ways of generating our electricity.

We hope you'll remind your Congressmembers now, as they are continuing to consider the federal budget, that nuclear loans must end.

Please feel free to e-mail us with your questions about the Japanese situation. We will respond to as many individual questions as we humanly can. Please check our website and Facebook pages regularly for updated information.

And please consider making a contribution to support our work; your help is needed now more than ever.

Thank you so much for all you do,

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org
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