Excuse me...haven't you got anything better to do?

Okay, the topics on the docket today have been discussed in both the blogosphere and in what said blogosphere derisively refers to as the "mainstream media". (Which is, by the way, an increasingly odd appellation in these days when anyone who is anyone has a blog...) At any rate, I have nothing new to add on either topic, but both are just so...damned...annoying that I feel compelled to write out some frustration.

Both topics, needless to say, are political.

1) DOAN GO THERE...

(or...Everyone's A Little Bit Racist...except Captain Canada...

Boy, you really gotta hand it to Parliament.

How many problems are facing this country right now? Let's start a little list. Here's mine:

--Of course, the environment's going to hell.
--Perhaps worse, nobody knows exactly what to do about the environment going to hell.
--Our troops are at war in Afghanistan.
--Our dollar's approaching parity with the Yankee greenback, meaning our manufacturers are facing the horrors of competing with Americans on a nearly level playing field. Yikes.
--Our relationship with the Chinese, soon to be the dominant economy on the planet, is not exactly favourable.
--The American economy is overdue for a serious correction, accompanied by a housing crash the likes of which has never been seen. If you don't think that's a Canadian problem, you'll learn otherwise when it hits.
--Our birth rate is well below replacement and falling...presenting a whole host of problems from the erosion of Canadian culture to the eventual inability to fund cherished social programs. Worse, very few seem to notice or care.

I suppose I could go on. Many people would suggest spiking fuel prices are a problem. For some, perhaps: long-haul truckers, for instance. Then again, the higher gas prices get, the more likely we are to make meaningful changes to our lifestyle. Maybe people will move closer to where they work, for example.
I could talk about crime--the rate for which, Statistics Canada insists, is dropping (although there's a rise in trifling little things like murder, attempted murder, assaults and robbery. You know, the kinds of crime where the judge pats the accused on the back and sends him out to offend again.)

In short, I could talk about a whole lot of things. So could you, I'm sure. And none of us would rank Shane Doan anywhere on any of our lists. Shame on us all.

Shane Doan, for you non-hockey fan, non-political types, is an NHL player for Wayne Gretzky's Phoenix Coyotes. He's also, at least for now, the Captain of Team Canada, presently competing and undefeated at the World Hockey Championships. But, see, Doan supposedly said something racist two years ago, and, well, he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the NHL, but since the NHL itself is racist...or something...oh, hell, I don't know. He'd better be stripped of his captaincy, or perhaps kicked off the team altogether. This, by the way, is coming from a Quebec Liberal...of the Quebec Liberals...from a province so racist it won't even allow English signs.

Doan's been cleared, as I said. The non-incident launched two lawsuits, proving once and for all that Canadians are just as frivolously litigious as their American cousins. If I was to sue everybody who ever called me a name, I'd have to retain a regiment of lawyers.

What concerns me most is that this is taking up time and money in Parliament. Wouldn't it be nice if our Parliament ran like a reality television show? (I know, it does, it does.) But really, we could all phone in every day and kick people out.

Speaking of politicians acting crazy...

2) STOP HIM! HE'S NOT SPENDING TAXPAYER DOLLARS!

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
--P. J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores

Be grateful you don't live in Toronto. Or if you do, now's about the time to GET THE HELL OUT.

After four years of socialist government, Canada's largest city totters on the edge of bankruptcy. It has robbed its reserve funds on numerous occasions in order to balance its budgets, keeping yearly tax increases at merely three times the rate of inflation. The mayor, David Miller, graduated magna cum laude in Economics from Harvard, has evidently forgotten everything he ever learned there, as his chief fiscal strategy revolves around begging other levels of government for more money. Given the way it's impossible to walk three blocks in downtown Toronto without being accosted (not always by people who are genuinely down on their luck, either), I guess Miller fits right in.
Here's a city run by unionists, where "contracting out" is about the worst epithet you can possibly imagine. (Why pay one person $12 an hour when you can pay four $24 an hour to do the same job?) It's bloated beyond belief--somehow, despite having amalgated six cities into one, there are thousands more employees now than before.

In addition to their overinflated salaries, Toronto city councillors have an office budget of $53,100 per annum. Some councillors--many, actually--seem togo out of their way to spend as much of that as they possibly can. George Mammolitti, for example, spent $49,795 last year...and he wasn't even the most profigate. Meanwhile, we have Doug Holyday, who spent $1471, and Rob Ford, who spent...zero.

At my work (and at a lot of other places besides, I suspect), we have something called Peer-to-Peer Action Plans. The idea is to take similar stores, of similar square footage and projected sales, and compare them against each other on dozens of criteria. If you find you lag in some areas compared to your peers--and everyone does, somewhere--you talk to each other and figure out what they're doing right and how you can improve. This seems like endless busywork, but done properly it makes all of our stores better.

It's no surprise to learn that Toronto city council's got something similar in place. Council has singled out the two tightwads above and placed them under investigation. Not so as to rein in other councillors' expenses, mind you. No, Rob Ford and Doug Holyday are not spending enough.

The horror.

Look, I don't like Rob Ford's politics--read his Wikipedia entry (which makes no mention of his frugality, at least as of this writing) and you get a picture of a not-particularly-nice man with issues. But I applaud his stinginess with taxpayer dollars. The same goes for his colleague, Doug Holyday, whose views I'm more in tune with. In a city with self-inflicted money wounds, these two ought to be cloned, not castigated.

There. I think I feel better.