Pope Benedict XVI asserts that Catholicism is the only true church. The document he approved states that other Christian churches are "defective" and not true churches. Pope Benedict also plans to bring back the Spanish Inquisition and witch burnings later this year.
Canadian Olympic Committee wants Toronto to try yet again to get the Olympics. Because if lackluster support for bringing the Olympics here twice wasn't enough the first two times, surely the third time everybody will change their minds and totally support it.
John Tory promises to spend all gas taxes on transit. Because it is unfair if the government spends gas taxes on anything else! Tory also promises to set up accounting programs to make sure that property taxes are only spent on lawn mowing services and that sales taxes are only spent on shiny new "Take A Penny Leave A Penny" trays.
NDP promises public dental care plan for the poor and needy if elected. John Tory demands that it be paid for out of dental taxes, and that the NDP's refusal to admit they will tax dentistry is dishonest.
Finally, Toronto's Alex Rios came in second in the annual Home Run Derby to Vladimir Guerrero, formerly of the Montreal Expos.
Photo by Blaine Kendall from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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That John Tory slag was dumb. Miller has the same idea with the "One Cent Now" campaign. It is reasonable and a far better idea than holding on to a surplus so you can say to Ontario voters "Look everyone we have a surplus, re-elect me".
I'm not looking forward to that next provincial vote, a choice between bad and worse. I guess that's usual in Canadian politics.
Maybe they could make a gas tax for all the health problems people have due to smog?
How about another gas tax to mitigate the effects of oil runoff, and one for global warming?
And so on, until all the externalities are paid for and gas costs about the same as (or likely more than) they pay over in Europe. That would be the day.
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is fear...fear and surpise, two, our TWO chief weapons are fear, surprise and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope, THREE...I'll start again.
Put The Explosively Talented Christopher Bird in the....comfy chair. CONFESS!
WannaBinToranna - I don't understand what you are making reference to, please tell us the name of your obscure source.
HA rek, if ever there was a sentence that resembled a snare trap...
Oh Popey Pope Pope. It's almost like he's saying "Hmmm, lets see how fast I can auger this sucker into the ground". Whats next, Catholic Fatwa's and Jihads?
Monty Python, kids...Monty Python.
With Mel Brooks in a close second for his portrayal of the Spanish Inquisition in "History of the World".
Yes, I know, someday I have to do a
C:\TEMP\delete *.useless
on my brain.
Benedict is the Bishop of Rome, after all. What else is he going to say? Maybe those schismatic Lutherans had a point after all? Everybody go and sign up for baptism and communion with them, instead?
The John Tory slag is in fact spot on and the "One Cent Now" campaign is in point of fact an almost completely different thing, the premise behind "One Cent Now" is just the fiscal imbalance again, i.e. the feds should spend regionally in rough proportion to where the tax is collected. It has nothing to do with the John Tory premise that some taxes ought to be dedicated to a specific purpose.
Politicians have been making this kind of promise since the dawn of time, and they get away with it because 99% of voters haven't got a clue how the federal and provincial fiscal systems actually work in law (which is very different than the way you or I would run our household or how a business would be run, for very good reason, because it's necessary to combat corruption and mismangement) to be fair 99% or politicians don't get it either if you follow your Auditor General's reports closely you'll remember a few years ago Madame Fraser specifically railing against exactly this kind of thing. As soon as you tie revenues and expenditures together in some way you tend to approriate Parlimentary oversight from spending decisions.
Any time I hear a politician or lobbyist claim that some revenue stream is "disappearing into general revenues" alarms go off, they are either just spreading bullshit or worse they are trying to create a sponsorship style slush fund.
I knew it!
If I were a betting man I'd have my money on Chicago to win the 2016 games hence North America won't get another kick at the cat until at the earliest 2028. Mounting a bid for the 2020 or 2024 games will be a losing proposition from the start. Now given the choice between pissing away single digit millions on another couple failed bids vs bankrupting the country for a generation by actually winning the thing I'll take failed bids.
Toronto did get unfairly screwed by the amazing piece of fiction known as the Atlanta Olympic bid, but we did ourselves no favours by smallmindedly and shortsightedly building the Skydome too small to accommodate a 400 m track or the minimum audience requirements for opening or closing ceremonies. So our 96 bid required building an entirely new stadium for track and field and open/close ceremonies. Coupled with shortsighted people complaining about Bread not Circuses, all our rah rah yay us bullshit couldn't overcome the fact that Toronto is a bush league city when it comes to the big stuff.
Olympics make money now -since '84, they've all made money except for Athens, which, for many other reasons, the loss can be explained.
Boo Olympics!
(And boo hard-to-read grey fonts!)
Olympics make money now -since '84
No they don't
Olympic Organizing Committees sometimes make money and that will only last as long as the big US TV networks pay insane amount for the rights.
Once you factor in all of the spending on stuff that the OOC doesn't cover themselves (security and policing, road/rail/airport infrastructure, some or all of the facilities) they pretty much always lose money, '84 may be the sole exception.
Calgary is the exemplar of this BS, the OOC made money and "reinvests" it in Canada Olympic Park and in other winter sports training facilities in the Calgary area, that are used as much by international teams as by Canadians but the City of Calgary and the Province of Alberta spent somewhere north of $1.3B on the C-train, road expansion and airport expansion that isn't on the books for the games. Not to mention what the feds spent on the RCMP to run security, but ask anyone and they will state with 100% certainly that the Calgary Olympics made money.
I was under the impression that Miller was planning to target the One Cent Now funds to roads and public transit.
-Sales tax revenue on ticket sales alone will be about 40 or 50 million
-The venues left behind generate income
-Visitors pay sales tax
-Renewed infrastructure stimulates economic growth (citizens enjoy longterm benefit from better highways, airport improvement, transit improvement etc)
-New construction jobs to build the venues and new jobs for employees of the games themselves (Utah created 35,000+ job YEARS)
-Visitors will pump well over a billion dollars into the BC economy
etc
etc
etc
Lots of economic effects aren't on the books either but you have to take them into consideration.
Bread not Circus people are so off on the planet mars with their heads in the sand.
I was under the impression that Miller was planning to target the One Cent Now funds to roads and public transit.
Key word planning. In any case the point here is that the taxes in question are the GST, a broad based tax consumption tax. The issue with the "gas tax->transport only expenditures" logic is that you convert a tax into a user fee, which is not what Once Cent Now advocates.
-Sales tax revenue on ticket sales alone will be about 40 or 50 million
Oh come on, how is that even possible? At the outside max a winter games will sell 2 million tickets (no games to date has sold more than 1.6 million) in order to generate 40 million in sales taxes that means the average ticket price would have to be $133 dollars which is more like a peak price for marquee events like the opening ceremonies but nobody is going to pay 130 bucks to watch opening round speed skating. And that's all based on very optimistic assumptions, a realistic number might be somewhere closer to 10-15 million, given that the security arrangements alone are estimated to cost the feds $200 million sales taxes are a drop in the bucket.
I'll presume the other stats you cite have a similar credibility.
Chester
Ever been to any Olympics? Tickets are really expensive.
The actual figure from the Whistler site projects ticket sales of over $231,000,000. (vancouver2010 dot com)
BC sales tax = 7, GST = 6...... = around $30,000,000 tax revenue from ticket sales.
So okay, I was a little high with 40 or 50.
All the other stuff I listed contained no stats - just huge benefits the economy enjoys from the before, during and after effects of staging something as amazing as the Olympics. If you refuse to consider these other benefits and their massive effect on a city, then sorry - you're looking through the wrong end of the binoculars and nothing I say will convince you otherwise, so let's just leave it at that.